I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas season, great holiday, and a wonderful New Year celebration.
First of all, I’ve got to thank everyone who just blessed us with cards and gifts and such a gracious, wonderful congregation.
And you guys can sit on the front row.
We can move this guitar case.
That’s right.
Hallie. I wasn’t many make room for, you know, front row Christians. We need, we’ll make room for, see, here we go.
We just, we just turned some into front row Christians here.
Don’t pay attention to that guy behind the curtain. May no attention to the man behind the curtain.
You guys don’t remember. Wizard of Oz.
Praise God.
You know, with the Lord bringing a new year, in our case, in this situation with the church,
he brought in a whole new season. As you know, Pastor Sixto and Pastor Susan started their
marriage restoration ministry that’s going to be in Murphy, North Carolina.
Now, it’s going to take them a little while to get that set up because what they’re building is an Airbnb with a number of cabins.
And, of course, they’re going to rent those out during the season.
want to make it free for those who are needing a restoration in their marriage. It’s going to be
very discreet. Nobody’s going to know who’s going there. I believe there’s going to be people in ministry,
you know, maybe some pastors, maybe some associate pastors. Everybody’s life is going to be attacked by the
devil. How many of you discovered that so far? When you signed up to be a Christian, you signed up in God’s
army and we’ve got an enemy. And Jesus made it really clear when he says, the thief comes to steal,
destroy. Well, he will try to steal your marriage. He will try to destroy everything in your life.
And, of course, Jesus said, I came that you might have life and that more abundantly. So we want
everybody to move into the full abundant life that’s available to them. And so we’re just excited that
ministry is going to be going. It’s kind of be, you know, still a partner ministry. We might be sending
people there and they might be sending people here. We don’t know. We just know that we’re going to stay
in touch and working in conjunction with them. But anyway, because they,
shifted all their focus. It’s going to take so much work there. They disconnected from,
you know, being here. They might be able to fly in every now and then. But, so anyway,
we rolled everything over as far as Life Christian University, of course, coming here, and
we started Live Christian Church. But we’re setting everything up new for, oh, thank you, Ryan.
I forget to turn that monitor off. It buzzes through the whole service and makes it annoying.
So anyway, what we want to do is when, I’m going to give you a little quick offering teaching. I’m going to have my wife. She wants to share some scriptures today. But we will have all new text to give numbers and giving at the website. Now there will be a new website that will be launched this week for Life Christian Church. It will be under the domain of LCC.LCC.LCUonline.com. And because we have, you know, several websites for the university, one is Lcus.
for all of our extension campuses all around the world and for online students to have the
LCUonline.com. And we certainly want more and more people to learn about our online program.
And so we’re believing it will be cross-pollinating things. You know that students from the online
program maybe will make this their church. Anybody out there that’s watching on the stream
right now tell other friends if you know they don’t have a church. Sometimes people live
isolated away from any place where they feel like they could really worship the Lord.
and have a service where it’s going to be built on the whole council of God’s word
and honor the Holy Spirit to be in charge of any services. You know, I’m happy when the Holy
Spirit takes over and I just get to stand back and watch him go. Now sometimes he has me be
involved in that. Sometimes he uses other people. But we want him to have full reign in all of these
services. And there’s not a lot of churches that will do that. There’s a lot of, you know,
pastors that don’t understand the word on that level and they haven’t experienced the presence of God on
that level. We want to make sure that this church is able to do that. And we could actually have,
we have good friends that actually the majority of their church are online churches because
they’re reaching people again that are somewhere in the middle of Idaho in a cornfield. I’ve had pastors,
I mean, I’ve had Christians tell me, listen, there is not a word church within 200 miles of where I live.
And there’s no place for me to go and study and understand. We have students that tell us those
kind of things. We got students in China. We got students in Cuba. We got students where
it’s illegal for them to be students.
but they’re doing it anyway, and God is using them.
There’s a huge underground church in China,
huge underground church in Cuba.
Now there’s things that they do allow there,
but there are things that they don’t allow.
And so anyway, people have to know the whole council of God’s word.
They’re hungry for the word.
They want everything that God wants to be in their lives.
They want that to be in their lives as well.
And so we want everybody to be invited to be part of that.
And so we’re trying to use the, you know, use the,
church services here to invite them up for it and use those that are online students.
We’ll be letting all of them know that these services are taking place every Sunday morning
here in Tampa, Florida.
Oh, if those people up in Wisconsin, in Maine,
and anywhere north of the Canadian border knew that we were in Florida here,
and even though we had a little cold spell for New Year’s Eve.
Our coldest day was, I think, New Year’s Eve this year.
But compared to you,
to what they have with six degrees below zero.
I thank God every day that I was born in Tampa, Florida,
and I get to live here the rest of my life.
The sunshine state.
But we have, of course, the S-O-N-shine state,
which is where we live at all times.
Every place we go is the sunshine state
because we carry the love of God with us at all times.
Do you want to go ahead and read your scriptures?
Come right up.
Just let me grab you a microphone here.
I just had three.
Actually, it’s one scripture with three different interpretations that I want to read
to you, because how many of you are sensing we’re into a new season?
And I don’t say that just because it’s, we passed January 1st, but if you’re an intercessor
or a prayer, you’ve already sensed it.
You’ve already begun walking at it.
It’s growing in you, you’re experiencing it, but you have an anticipation of so much more of what
God is doing in the body of Christ.
You see, the body of Christ has been challenged the last few years.
sense that? Have we had pushback? But you know what precedes that is the pushback and after
that comes the glory. We’re going into a season of the glory. But you’ve got to be ready for it.
So I wanted to read you Isaiah 43, chapter 43, verse 18 and 19. And this is in the passion translation.
And it says, stop dwelling on the past. Don’t even remember those former things. In other words,
you can’t look back on the former things. Maybe you didn’t.
last year. Maybe things weren’t so good in the past season, but he says, stop dwelling on the
past. This is how, these are tips on how to get you to the new season and into the glory. Don’t even
remember the former things. You got to bring every thought captive to the obedience of Christ,
and you’ve got to shut down the thoughts of those former things. He says, I’m doing something
brand new, something unheard of, something you haven’t even heard of yet. You don’t even know yet,
because it hasn’t been spoken to you yet.
It’s unheard of. He says, even now it sprouts grows and mature. So it’s already been
a seed planted in you and it’s growing and it’s producing in you right now. He says, don’t you
perceive it? How many of you have already perceived it? He says, I’ll make a way in the wilderness
opening up flowing streams in the desert. Amen. So he’s doing a brand new work, something that’s
unheard of. We got to keep that.
in mind. So we can’t look at what he did in the past because if it’s brand new, we haven’t seen it
yet. It’s unheard of. He’s going to, and he says he’s going to create paths and resources that are
seemingly impossible. You may have been in a situation. It looks impossible in the natural. But you know
God specializes on the impossible. When we keep our eyes on what he’s doing and we flow in the
glory of what God is doing, the impossible becomes the possible.
Amen. All right, I’ve got another. I’m going to read it to you now. That was the passion
translation. Here’s the new living translation. It says, God tells his people to forget about
the past troubles and focus on the new things that he’s about to do. So you’ve got to keep your eyes
focused on the new things. That’s a faith response. How many of you know, that’s a faith response.
You know, if you’re meditating on what happened before on the, on the things that didn’t work
out. Maybe you didn’t advance as far as you’d like to advance in the last few years, but if you
focus on that, you’ll miss the new and what he’s doing. He’s about to do promising to create pathways
in rivers and desolate places. He is a message of hope and transformation,
illustrating his power to provide and make a way where there seems to be none. Isn’t that the God
we know? It’s what he’s getting ready to do for his people this year. And in this season,
so he’s not limited in your past he’s actively initiating something fresh and something that’s
unheard of and unprecedented and he’s calling us to be aware of what’s going on he says don’t you see
it listen to this he says don’t you see it you’ve got to see things in the spirit realm before
you ever see it in the natural so when you spend time in the word when you spend time in the word
when you spend time in his presence you’ll begin to see things that you don’t see in the natural
he reorganizes he shows you ways that you had never thought before and he’ll show you in the
secret place how to get out of that place he’ll drop things in you that you’re not going to get any
other way but you’ve prayed it through in the secret place i see somebody else over here who’s been
there before there are things the lord has shown me that i wouldn’t have gotten any
other way except i prayed it through i listened to the lord i asked the lord and i listened for his
instructions so we got to listen for his instructions okay and i’m going to one last scripture here or
one last interpretation this is in the message bible again it’s is Isaiah chapter 43 verse 18 and 19
it says forget about what’s happened don’t keep going over old history that’s a word for somebody in
don’t keep going over the old stuff don’t rewind that tape and play it back over and over
again you got it cut the tape off he says be alert and be present so you got to be alert for the
season watching and be present in the moment of what god is doing and that takes a relationship with
him it’s an active relationship with a living god he says i’m about to do something brand new
it’s bursting out don’t you see it it’s already bursting
out and it’ll burst forth more as you stay hooked up and you stay looking for that
what he’s doing paying attention listening to him he says there it is i’m making a road through
the desert rivers in the badlands so if you’ve been in the bad lands in the past season he says i’m making
a river in the bad lands to get you out of there you’re not going to stay there so it takes a spiritual
awareness to get to the new season and that’s what i’m trying to tell you that’s what we want
you to focus in on i don’t care if it was the bad lands i don’t care if your history says well i didn’t
you know i didn’t i couldn’t make it in the last season or or i had all the opposition and it was bad
god says we’re not in that season he says shut off the thinking just shut it off don’t rewind that one
we’re moving into the new season and that’s where he creates life in the barren season
and there’s hope and provision in this season so i just want to encourage you in that word
that we’re going forward we’re not staying in the bads the bad lands the season of old we’re moving in
but you’re going to have to get it because it’s it starts in the spirit realm it’s you’ve got to be
spiritually aware and you’ve got to focus on what god is doing not on what the enemy’s done in the
path amen all right so amen i got a vision i got a vision from what it was just said there
i can see you’re in the badlands and god makes a river through the badlands and he sends a big
what are the not floats there um raft he sends a big raft for you get in and float right out of the
badlands right down the river as it goes into the goodlands you know who gets into the goodlands those who got
out of the bad lands by the spirit
right they didn’t stay there so you got to know when not to stay right not to stay in that season all right
as we move on uh you have some cards in front of you if you have not filled out a card yet we’re asking
you to fill one out uh it gives information for us so we can keep in contact with you and as we move
everything into the new system we need to have some information for you so if you guys would fill that out
and you can put it into the offering envelope the other thing is i want to remind you that at 930 on
Sunday mornings is intercessory prayer in the conference room so if you are an intercessor if you’re
a prayer if you’d like to be part of the intercessory group here then come join me at 930 over in the
conference room amen praise god we could all use plenty of prayer you know and the reality is when
you’re an intercessor sometimes you just pray in the spirit you don’t know who god’s using to pray for but
you’re praying for somebody who needs it and the cool thing about being an intercessor
is if you are intercessor, the first thing that the other intercessors are praying for are the other intercessors.
you at first. He puts you at the front of the lens, in the front of the line, to be able to be
blessed from somebody’s intercession. So, praise God. Yes, and there will be, again, we’re having
to use a complete new system of things to be able to be in contact with all the members, and
you know, we’ll try to contact members that haven’t been here in a while. We’re still trying to
gather all the information and be able to be in touch with those. We just want to make sure that
everybody has an opportunity to grow in the things of God and basically have your life transformed.
That means changed from the inside out, from the glory of God on the inside to the outside,
and it will just change the whole culture around you. I’m going to deal with that a little bit in our
message today, but one of the things about us sowing our seed into life Christian churches,
you would make your checks. If you’re writing checks out, you would make them out to
life Christian church now. I know you had to do it to TCF for a long time, but again,
this is a different bank account and everything, so it’s all Life Christian Church. And then,
if you’re giving, wanting to text to give or give online, we have a new text number that
you’ll be using, which is 888-966-8750. And for those of you watching the stream, you know,
that’ll be a new number for you. Just if you don’t see it on there, let me just repeat.
repeat it again so you can write it down if you want a text to give. It’s 8888. So we’ve got an 800 number,
glory to God. 888-966-8750. And for just this Sunday, if you’re giving online, you can just use the
LCUonline.com. There’s a giving button there. It’s the same tithley button. And it will be going
into our church account, I mean, going to our university account, we will transfer it over into the church
account, but then next week it will be actually LCC.LCUonline.com for the online giving.
But again, we’re just so grateful for all the things that everybody has been doing and supporting.
And now in the transition coming out of the last year, we have a little bit of deficit that needs to be
taken care of. So anybody that’s just happens to be flushed with something extra,
if you want to sow an extra seed at the beginning of the year. So you get a, I like, I used to
around and saying, I always like being one-up on God. What does that mean? I like being able
to sew something when I was expecting God to replace it with something bigger and better. I just
remember when I used to sew cars. Well, before I could sew cars, I always wanted to
sew cars. I wanted to be like Kenneth Copeland. I heard how he was sewing planes, airplanes to people,
then jets to people. And so I just remember when the Lord made it a way for us to be able to give away
a car. And we sewed a Toyota and reaped a town car. That’s a pretty good deal.
You know, it’s like, I mean, a little Toyota to sell for a giant town barge. It’s back when
they were a big barge. And then we sewed a Pontiac and reaped a Cadillac. Now, that was pretty cool,
too. And I used to say then, you know, God always gives the best gifts, those who leave the gift
up to him, give the choice up to him. But the reality was, it was just sewing forward.
You know, it’s like people, the world says, you pay it forward.
Well, we usually pray it forward. But we do so expecting to receive.
Now, let me read this one verse of scripture here that Paul wrote to the Philippians.
And, of course, everybody remembers this voice. It’s this verse.
It’s actually a prosperity verse. It’s actually a giving and prosperity birth.
Verse when he said in Philippians 413, he was talking to the Philippian Church,
who always supported his ministry. He says, I can do all things through Christ who
strengthens me. Then he’s really talking about the fact I can make it in all of my assignment
because God strengthens me. And it’s not just for, I mean, it’s for financial things, but just for
anything. You can apply that verse for anything. But then he happened to say this,
you can nevertheless, you have done well that you shared in my distress. So the apostle Paul was
sometimes traveling and, you know, they didn’t have cell phones. They didn’t have telephones. They didn’t have
a very good communication whatsoever. They had to have somebody that was traveling and finding out
information and passing it on and getting back to other places. A lot of times they didn’t know
where the Apostle Paul was. He wasn’t ghosting them. He wasn’t trying to cut them off from the
information. He was just going by the Holy Spirit’s leading into the next place. And they didn’t
always know where he was and they didn’t always know where to be able to reach him and give some gifts to
him. And in this particular case, he was in need. He was in a distress.
He says, but you Philippians, you have done well that you shared in my distress.
Now listen to this verse. This is amazing.
Verse 15 of Philippians 4.
Now you Philippians know also that in the…
the beginning of the gospel. He was talking about when he brought the gospel to them. Now, if you
remember when he brought the gospel to the Philippians, it was when he and Silas were in jail
and they were beaten for casting a demon out of a little girl who was a fortune teller, and it cost
these guys who owned the little slave girl a lot of money after that, because she couldn’t tell
fortunes anymore. She got delivered from telling fortunes. Isn’t that amazing? And so anyway,
they were thrown into prison and then at midnight Paul and Silas are worshiping the Lord and the power
of God filled the place. We know that that happened because at midnight all of a sudden while they’re
worshiping God and all these prisoners are listening, the chains fell off of all of them and the doors
of the prison opened up and these guys didn’t move. They were caught up in the worship. They’re just
listening to Paul and Silas worshipping God. They had an
encounter with God’s presence. And then all of a sudden the jailer hears that, you know,
all the doors have opened up and chains fell. He was sure everybody just ran out. They escaped.
And he knows as a centurion, he’s going to be executed by Rome for allowing these prisoners to
escape. So he comes to close to the door, but he draws his sword ready to kill himself.
And Paul says, do yourself no harm. We’re all still here. He’s going, what? Yeah, we’re in the
presence of God. We’re safe, even in a jail. All of our bonds have fallen off, you know.
So he was taken out by the jailer, and he washed their wounds and stuff. His house must have been
right there next to the jail, but in order to, again, not be executed by Rome, must have locked
the other guys up again. But those guys are listening to this whole event. Then they’re listening
to Paul preach the gospel to his family. And the guy’s family could say, they all get baptized, but I
know a lot of those prisoners got saved too. The church in Philippi started, I think the jailer
became the pastor of the church at Philippi and his family. And then those jailer, those people in jail
one by one started getting out and they joined the church. So you talk about a rag-tag group of people,
you know. So, and it says they started off in great poverty, but they wanted to support Paul’s
ministry because they said, he came to us like an angel that fell from heaven. And they said, how can we not
support his ministry. So he says this, now you Philippians know at the beginning of the gospel,
when I brought the gospel to you, when I departed from Macedonia, no church shared with me
concerning giving and receiving, but you only. The Philippians were so grateful that they were saved. Are you
grateful that you’re saved? We sing that song, Amazing Grace, and it just takes me back 52 years
to when I got born again. And I was so delighted to be saved.
because Jesus spoke to me and I came into his kingdom and I got set free from all this stuff
and then I discovered I needed to go to church. It would be a nice thing to do as a Christian
to go to church, you know, so. But then I found out there’s a whole kingdom of God, born-again believers
all over the planet. I joined this giant family and I’ve traveled the world. I’ve been to 25
different nations and I’ve stayed usually with Christians in every place all over the world
and every place I show up and stay with them, it’s like staying with family. I mean, they take
into your homes. And you just go, we’re just family. And so you’re not afraid of the body of
Christ anywhere you go. And it’s like so comforting when you get there and you’re with the family,
even if it’s in Moscow, Russia. I’ve been places that would have been scary to me to go by myself
and I just was not afraid to be in there because I was with family. So again, nobody, no other church
shared with me concerning giving and
and receiving. Paul knew and they knew because they kept receiving after they gave.
God never intends for anybody to give into the kingdom. Give into the gospel. Give for the sake of the
kingdom going forward without you getting a return, a return from his kingdom. Now, you don’t get money
dropped out of the sky. You know, when he says, you know, as my God shall supply all your riches
according to his glory in Christ Jesus. That’s the 19th verse. He doesn’t drop the money down
out of heaven. He just knows where it is on the earth that he can get it to you. And he will do it
miraculously. Thank God he’d do it miraculously. Anybody ever had one of those situations where
you’re driving and your car runs out of gas and you’re out stuck somewhere, but you, and you know
that the gas tank thing is going to the, the gauge has gone down to zero. And you pray,
Lord, I can’t be stranded out here. I need to get to where we need to go. And, and
somehow the car just keeps going with no gas in it until you get
I mean, I’ve had that happen.
One time my wife and I were going to a friend of her’s wedding,
and it was six degrees, below zero,
as we’re driving from Oklahoma to Knoxville, Tennessee.
And we’re driving along, and all of a sudden, the car starts going,
and it just, I said, oh, no, I just pulled over the side of the road.
And all of a sudden, we heard the engine kick back in.
It stopped fluttering and stuff, and it starts running.
Well, it turns out.
there was enough moisture in there that it froze in the carburetor.
And once we sat there, it warmed it up.
And I said, listen, we can’t take a chance here.
Six degrees below zero, we could die out here.
You know, so we got to stop at the next motel we find.
Guess what it was, the Buck Snort Motel in Buck Snort, Tennessee.
We were so happy to see Buck Snort Motel.
And we pulled in and our lives were saved because of Buck Snort Motel.
So anyway, God will always.
make a way. He will show up and make sure that you’re cared for. So again, giving and receiving.
They learned that they were going to receive. You know, some people said, well, they told me at my church
never, never give, expecting to get. Well, then they lied to you from your church because Paul says
you should be receiving if you give. God is able to open up the windows of heaven to tithers and
pour out a blessing that’s actually bigger than you can receive. You know, so I want to get a whole bunch
of safes. So I got enough to receive everything.
he wants to give me. I mean, you know, expect God to give you bigger than what you can receive
right now. So, well, we just need another save. We need more, whatever. It is more accounts. You need
whatever. So get ready. I believe in this year, we’re going to see the greatest transfer of wealth
into the body of Christ that the church has ever seen. Now, Israel saw a great transfer of wealth when they
came out of Egypt. And the reality is, I think we’re at a time where it’s the church like coming out of
Egypt oppressing the church and he’s going to do it with, I hope we’ll have the same things that
they got. They came out of Egypt with all the wealth of Egypt and there was not one feeble one among them.
That was the greatest mass healing revival that ever took place on the planet. Oh, out of two million
people, at least two million people, you know there was a lot of people that weren’t infirm and everything
else. But as they’re leaving and departing, every single one of them was healed. Not one of them
was feeble and going into the promised land until they doubted gun.
and got stuck in the wilderness for 40 years. You know, after God did those kind of
deliverances and kind of provision, you think, why didn’t they just keep going in? But that’s why
again, he says, I’ll take the next generation, you guys will just have to die in the wilderness.
After I did all of that for you, if you could, but write it all down so your next generation
will remember the Red Sea, the great crossing, the deliverance, and how he caused the enemies
to drown. And it’s amazing how they crossed over. And of course, when Pharaoh and his
armies chased them through and all of a sudden the water came back in and they all drowned.
Today they’re still discovering in the Red Sea all the remnants of the army of Egypt, you know,
the chariots, the wheels. I mean, I’ve seen videos of all this stuff. And they really did all drown.
How in the world? They all drowned out here in the sea. Read the Bible. God did it. So he’s got a way
of taking care of our enemies, causing the blessing to come on us. But we’re going to be like
Joshua, the Joshua generation that went into the promised land. It’s time to take the
promised land now. It’s time for the church to rise up and take the promised land, which is planet Earth.
Amen. Jesus, we’re going to look at a scripture here. We’re going to find out he’s going to
reign until God makes his enemies, his footstools. We’re going to be the ones that are going to get
the victory for him making all of his enemies, his footstool. So anyway, if you’re giving
a check and I’m old school, I’ve earned the
right to be old school. I’m not old. I’m just older. So I’m old, so we just write life Christian
church. Yes. Right?
Okay, online. Okay, online. Okay, we worked on getting all that in place. But it might be something
that still wasn’t working. So go ahead. If you’re doing online giving, just use the LCUonline.com
and then the tithely giving button there. And the good thing about the tithely is, once you
put all your information in. It just stays there and it makes it real easy to give them the next
time. So anyway, let’s pray over our offering. And are you going to help us, Roy? Okay. Praise God.
Roy, just after he retired from the Marine Corps, God has kept him busy in ministry all these years.
I was second teamer. I’m just going to try and live up to Greg’s. Amen. Amen. So Father in Jesus
Jesus’ name, we just lift up our offerings to you. We thank you, Father, that we have this.
opportunity as born again believers to sow into your kingdom.
And we know that, as the Apostle said, we can give and receive
because we’ll receive back from you, good measure, pressed down,
shaking together, running over, you’ll give to us.
Lord, it’ll come in from the east and the west, the north and the south.
You’re going to make all of the provision available to us so we can live well
and we can support your kingdom well and make an influence,
make an impact in this generation with all that we do.
In Jesus mighty and matchless name, we just give you the praise.
Amen and amen.
So I’ll walk mine over here.
Praise God.
Hallelujah.
Well, we had our first men’s meeting yesterday of the year.
And again, it takes a while for everybody to get in sync with, you know,
we’re going to be doing those.
The first Saturday of every month, we meet at 8.30.
We have a conference room here.
I’ve got, in my mind, something better than just donuts.
I want to find a way to bring in men’s breakfast.
breakfast, you know, a catered breakfast of some sort, you know, some bacon eggs and, you know,
all the stuff.
And so we could have, you know, a real good time there.
And, of course, we have a music rehearsal.
We’re going to try to get where the music team doesn’t need to do a rehearsal on that Saturday,
you know, because we have to kind of shorten the Bible study,
because sometimes the Bible studies will go longer.
We’re going to, we prayed over it before giving, but let’s just pray on this to be doing the job it needs to do.
Sure, go ahead.
Oh, let me get a microphone.
They’re over here.
Father God, we thank you for what you provide to us.
We come here this morning to return to you with faith and enthusiasm,
an offering that we know will continue to contribute to God’s kingdom as we go on.
In Jesus’ name, we pray.
Amen. Amen. Praise God. Hallelujah.
You know, Roy didn’t believe in retirement, even though he retired from the Marine Corps,
career Marine Corps officer, retired from the RV industry, and got twice, and then got refired
and worked in the Gideans for years and years. Distributed a lot of Bibles over the years
and headed up the team here in Tampa for a lot of times, and it was just done. So now he’s retired.
from that so that he can help out here. Praise God. Glad to have all the help we can get.
Now, I wrote here, just kind of a heading for it. The beginning of a new era brings spiritual
blessing, financial blessing, financial blessing, discipleship growth, and kingdom expansion. I know that
the Lord wants to do some mighty things here in the earth. We knew that when he told us he wanted us to
pastor again. You know, we have the university that’s got, has had campuses in at least
24 different nations, 25 different nations that we’ve set up extension campuses. We got online
students all over the planet and 25,000 graduates over the first 30 years of the university. And so
we’re delighted with being able to do that, but we just still felt like there was something missing
in our hometown. And it wasn’t that there weren’t other great churches in town. It’s just that over the
years of being a Christian here for 52 years, I’ve watched a lot of churches that we know
to be solid word churches close their doors or morph into something else, you know? And I said,
Lord, I think there’s a void and a vacuum in our own community. And then we heard a couple of prophecies
and we just knew that God was going to do something great in the Tampa Bay area and in Florida. And we
knew we had to be part of it. So the Lord had us start planning for and praying to be a
able to pastor here in Tampa. And so finally we’re doing that. I feel like I’ve been telling
all of my friends, I said, you know, it’s kind of crazy that the Lord’s assignment, you never say
no to the Lord. How many of you learn that? Never, ever say never to the Lord. And so whatever he says
to do, there’ll be a great blessing in your obedience to follow in that. And so I’ve been telling
everybody that says, it feels really good to be back in the saddle again. I mean, just an old
cowboy saying, because I used to have a pony. I tell everybody, says, listen, you know,
What was your dream as a kid for Christmas? You wanted to get a pony, right? On my 10th Christmas, I got a pony with a red bow on his back. A little Welch pony. I mean, it’s like a little kid’s dream, you know? And then later on my mom got a couple of, you know, retired thoroughbred race horses that were scary because I was the size of a jockey. And if a jockey gets on one of these things, I mean, these things are massive and fast. And so anyway, but, you know, you move into new things with the
and they can be very exciting.
but how many of you know the devil hates it
and he wants to oppose it.
So what I found is that I have to be much more on point
and much more disciplined.
Now I’ve already become a disciple a long time ago.
52 years ago, I became a disciple.
My first year that I was saved,
I was so hungry, I read the New Testament
through five times in five different translations.
Now, the Lord started showing me
with this new year and a new era
that we would not make a new year’s
resolution. I hate New Year’s resolutions. Why do I hate New Year’s resolutions? Because people
usually want to make such a huge change. They try to bite off too big a bite and they find out they
can’t sustain that. But I do believe in New Year’s revolutions. A New Year’s revolution is when you say
I revolt against the world system. I revolt against the system that says I can’t start something as a
a new discipline as a disciple of the Lord.
How many of you know that’s what disciple means?
That you’re a disciplined one.
And that you can take a discipline on that you can maintain.
Now, so anyway, so I’m going to revolt against the same old, same old.
Here’s something I read from somebody, great philosopher.
Motivation won’t last.
It’s not your fuel.
Build a routine.
That was from the philosopher, Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Now Arnold, he was talking about being able to succeed. And he said, no, listen, when I started off in
bodybuilding, I wanted to be the greatest bodybuilder in the world. And he actually got to that
point, won the Mr. Olympia competition eight years, eight times. So he did that. Well, okay,
did that. But he found out there wasn’t as much money in that as he felt that he needed and that he
would like to have. And so he wanted to go into movies. Of course, the first movie he did was to be
Conan the barbarian, you know. And then the
Terminator and all those things. Well, he’s very successful because what he did was he built a routine
of things that kept him moving forward to his goal. And then, of course, he ran for governor of the
state of California as a Republican. And won. And was a successful governor. Now, you know, that’s a
miracle in California for a Republican to win. Maybe never ever will happen. No, I’m not going to
to confess that. It could happen again.
Maybe California all get saved. And then they’ll vote for Republicans.
Oh, we know some wonderful churches out there. It’s just they’re not in the majority.
So again, what we have to do is become disciples and develop a new discipline.
So I started, I started saying, Lord, what is it? I know that the key for us as born again believers
that you expect each one of us to be in the word and to pray.
But if we could develop a habit of being in the word and praying every single day at the beginning of the day.
Here’s the key thing about what happens when you do with the very first of the day.
Now listen, I started saying, okay, listen, I got a friend who just said, he has just the members of his church read a chapter a day.
So I just, I went to the, I said, Lord, where do you want us to start?
He says, well, one of the Gospels, one of the Gospels, and let’s do this as the whole Bible.
body. Let’s do this as the church. No, it’s a volunteer. You’re a volunteer army anyway. So there’s
there’s no pressure here. Volunteer, but the Lord’s, I looked in and I said, Lord, you know,
that first chapter in the book of John, that took me two and a half pages. And that took me a little
more time than I thought, you know, that I should just say, well, this should be our standard. How much of
the word should we had? And he just said, one page. One page takes about five minutes. So all I think
the Lord is asking for us is five minutes of reading the Bible. Read one page in the book of
John. Now, of course, this is the fourth. Today’s the fourth. So you might need to get caught up by reading
four days’ worth. So four whole pages of the book of John. Listen, trust me, it’s going to be,
it’ll be good. It’ll be refreshing. It’ll be wonderful. And I’ll tell you why the gospel of John.
John wrote a gospel, the other gospels had been written, Matthew, Mark, Mark, Luke. And he
wanted to have the perspective from heaven. He wanted to give a perspective of what Jesus did
before he came to earth as a baby because God created the Messiah, but he really got this understanding
that Jesus was part of the Godhead before he came to the earth. But he wasn’t the Son of God. Before
then, he was known as the Word. And so it says here, in the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God,
and you know.
and the word was God.
So in the beginning, we had the Word, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit.
Now, I like calling the Holy Spirit the Holy Enforcer.
Because what he does is he enforces the Word that Jesus speaks.
You could use the Word Jesus for Him, but he didn’t have that name.
There was just Word.
So the Holy Spirit is going to enforce the Word that the Word speaks.
So one God manifests in three personalities.
So the Father thinks of the thought.
And then the Word will speak that thought and creation happens because the Word in the Holy Spirit enforces that word that is spoken.
Now, here’s the whole issue that just blows people’s minds.
A lot of people say, well, why is it that you, why is you guys love Jesus so much?
And I want to tell them, because he created the universe.
He created you.
He created me.
He created everything.
But not as Jesus, not as the baby who came in the manger.
Praise God, we just have that wonderful season of the incarnation, when the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.
You know, but let’s just take a look at what he did from the very beginning.
God wanted to have a family.
He had, now God, I believe, was an experimenter.
You know, he didn’t mind an experiment.
So the first thing he did was creating an angelic family.
And this angelic family was before he had created a universe.
They actually watch God create the universe, and they just rejoiced as he, you know, created the universe.
They were referred to as stars watching the creation of all these.
So anyway, but he lost one third of the angelic family because he also, in creating them,
had to give them a free choice just like he’s got.
It’s called a volitional faculty, the faculty to be able to make a choice yourself.
And he gave them the ability to have a choice.
And one of them chose to rebel and take everybody who was under here.
I believe there were three archangels, two names you know of, Michael and Gabriel.
And the other one that sometimes people refer to as Lucifer, because that’s the Greek, I mean,
that’s the Latin word for shining one.
But the Hebrew word for shining one is halel.
And so there were three angels, Mike L, Gabriel, and Halel.
The word L in there meant of God, created of God.
three-head archangels, and each one of them were over a third of the angels.
Well, when this archangel rebelled and wanted to usurp God’s throne, he wanted to own the whole planet,
he wanted to own everything, even before the planet was here, he wanted to own God’s kingdom.
God lost a third of the angels.
And that’s why I tell people, I think God understands what failure feels like.
It has to, that had to feel like failure to God.
That one-third, he knew anything.
advance giving them this opportunity when they could fall. And they did. They chose a third of them
chose to fall. But he always had a plan. He wanted a human family created exactly in his image.
Exactly. Now the reality is when you finally get to see God the father face to face,
you might be thinking, oh, he’s going to be this giant on this giant throne. Guess what?
He’s going to look exactly like you and you’re going to be able to see him face to face. You’re going to be the same,
your same size.
Because when he created Adam, I like the way Kenneth Copeland described it.
It was like he built his identical twin out of the soil, picked him up and breathe the breath of life into him.
And Adam became a living being, created in God’s likeness and image exactly like him.
And of course, he intended for him to also be like the rest of his creation, to procreate.
So out of his rib, he took his match.
the one that was the opposite of him sexually so that they could procreate,
but it was to be a partner, taken by it from his rib to be right at his side,
an equal partner in this whole thing.
How many of you found out that God calls spirits, not genders?
And we’re all called because of our spirit being,
and our spirit being, the real us, has a call of God and a purpose on this earth.
And so what he does,
what he did here was the word, of course, you know,
that needed to do something to be able to, or in God’s mind,
he needed to have a physical planet to place this on.
Now, I can’t believe that he created the entire universe just for this one planet,
but apparently that’s the truth.
Because it was only on planet Earth that he did plant his family.
So anytime you’re looking for UFOs coming, you know,
listen, anything that appears, and I’ve seen,
in this guy before?
those fallen angels that are able to make things appear like they are, you know, from
another planet.
But you know, the closest planet to Earth that could actually sustain life is something
like 400 light years away.
So if there was life there and they had an ability to travel at the speed of life, speed of
light, 186,000 miles per second, they would still have had to travel from 400 years
in this vessel and have enough food on board and everything to be able to get all the way to
hear, not even knowing if there is life here.
So I don’t think they’re there.
Anyway, so what he said here, in the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God,
the Word was God, in the beginning, he was in the beginning with God,
and all things were made through him, and without him, nothing was made that was made.
Nothing was made in the entire created universe that
wasn’t made without the word speaking it and the Holy Spirit, the Holy Enforcer, enforcing it
to come to pass. So God created his planet, put us on it. Now here we are 2,000, actually 1,996 years now
away from the time that Jesus paid the price for us to have the Holy Spirit restored back to us.
Because when God lost the corporate head of the human race, because he gave him the ability to choose,
and he chose wrong, then God lost 100% of it.
of the human race. That had to feel like failure, I’m sure. But Jesus was never planned B.
God knew it was going to happen. He always planned that the Word was going to have to come to
the earth and become one of us and die in our place, do a miraculous exchange his righteousness
for our sinfulness and make us part of the family of God. So what Adam lost when the Holy Spirit moved
out of him and Eve, and they were even clothed with the glory of God. They had the
glory of God filling their souls. And God says, I’m going to return the Holy Spirit back to you,
but I can only put him in your spirit. You are going to have to renew your mind. You’re going to have to
have the Holy Spirit fill your soul. And the only way you can do that is a disciple of the Lord,
taking the word in. You’ve got to know the word so the Lord can transform your life by that word.
You say, well, five minutes a day, you think that’s enough? Do you know how few Christians
read the Bible for five minutes every morning?
You will be part of the smallest percentage of Christians, just doing that five minutes.
And what I’m guaranteeing you is that five minutes of reading the word, and we’ll track along together.
If you guys just catch up to where I’m at tomorrow I need to be on chapter, page five,
because it’s the fifth day of the month. And so this morning I made sure, I actually, I reread page five today because I was already at that point.
So, but, you know, this.
is as a volunteer army. So the first time, maybe today you could take the time to read
20 whole minutes and get caught up to page four of the book of the book of John. And, of course,
I want to mention this. It says, in him was the life, and the life was the light of men, and the light
shines in the darkness. The darkness did not even comprehend it. You know, people in the world
cannot comprehend. You look exactly like them to them. They can’t see your salvation on the inside of
you. Your spirit is born again. And you got, you know, convinced that you needed to be in church and
make some changes and stuff, but they don’t really see all those changes. But if we change enough,
what will happen to us is we will carry a consciousness, a presence of Lord. What I know is that
whatever you start your day off with, some reason it sticks with you. It comes back to your
consciousness over and over again throughout the day.
So if you start the day with five minutes in the word, God will keep speaking to you
throughout the day. And every place you go, especially if you, what we’re going to say is we’re going
five minutes of the word and five minutes of prayer. Now, if you pray in tongues, great. Pray in tongues
for those five minutes. If you don’t, pray asking the Lord to reveal to you what he wants you to do,
what your purpose is. Why did he put you on this planet? You’re not here by accident. He has no
mistakes. I was telling the guy,
yesterday about my sister who had three sons, but then the two oldest ones, they were able to
play with a little kid across the street from him. And his nickname was boo. And I asked my sister
one day, I said, boo, how did he get a nickname like boo? They said, oh, that’s short for boo-boo.
His parents told him, we never planned on having you. You were a boo-boo. You were a mistake.
Listen, children, so many children have experienced so much abuse and trauma
Thank you.
and things because of the lie of the devil.
I remember once that my mom showed me a picture of this guy.
She said, I almost married this guy.
If I did, you wouldn’t have been born.
And I was already a Christian and said, yeah, I would have been born.
I just would have looked different.
Because God planned me.
God planned each and every one of us.
Only God can put a human spirit into a forming embryo.
He’s the only one that’s the source of life.
He planned you.
And they already know this.
Scientists know this, that whenever a male sperm goes into that female egg,
a little flash of light happens.
I’m convinced God opens up a portal,
and that’s when he places the human spirit into that forming embryo.
Because by God’s hand and his purpose for you being here, he put you there.
I don’t care how the life turned out before.
God’s got a way to redeem you from all of that stuff
and get you balanced in him whole and vision.
victorious moving forward to accomplish some purpose that he got for you here.
Because he wants every one of us actually to be an ambassador for his kingdom.
What is it to be an ambassador?
I remember going to, we had a campus in Stockholm, Sweden, and I was there every year, four years in a row, preaching and stuff there.
And I kept telling my wife, I said, oh, listen, she was home with the kids.
And I said, as soon as you can, you’ve got to travel with me to Stockholm.
It’s absolutely the most beautiful city I’ve ever.
were seen. Turns out the king in Scotland, I mean, in Stockholm, 500 years or so ago, he traveled
to all of Europe. And he observed all the greatest architecture in Spain, in France, in England,
all through Europe. And so he commissioned a bunch of architects to replicate a bunch of the buildings
from the most beautiful buildings from all over Europe. And so you go to Stockholm and you’ll say,
oh my gosh, this is just like, it’s, believe me, it’s way better than Disney World.
Even though it’s a shocker to walk into Disney World. It’s just amazing. And so anyway,
you know, what we have available to us from the Lord is this creativity and this ability to be exactly
what God wants us to be. And every one of us has a divine purpose that he put us on this earth.
A lot of Christians never even ask the Lord. Why did you?
put me here. I know I’m not an accident. I know you planned to me. You must have had a
plan for me. And I always say this too. It doesn’t matter how old you are. It’s never too late
to start pursuing that plan. And God says, I’ll make sure you can still accomplish it
in your lifetime. So again, so what we’re going to be doing is reading a New Testament for five
minutes to date. Now, I just counted my pages for the book of John. And it’s 35.
pages. So that’s just a little bit more than a month. And so little at a time, we’ll roll out.
And here’s what I found out also as a professor in the university and as we put this whole
program together, that when you have a group of students, they’re all studying the same thing at the
same time, they discuss it with one another and they just cause a lot more learning to happen because
they all get insight to what we’re reading. So it would be a great thing for us all to be kind of on the
same page as we’re reading through the Word of God. So we’re going to do the book of John.
then we’re going to take on one of the epistles. We’re going to look at the book of Ephesians.
And then a sister book of that is Colossians. And I’m telling you, I know that that’s going to take
us, I don’t know how many months, you know, three months or so to get that far. But I know in a
three-month period of time, you’re going to notice a difference. I guarantee that after a year of five
minutes a day, and I believe that you can sustain this. Now, listen, stuff happens. I know. You
wake up some days, you’ve got an emergency. And you’ve got to run out the door and you didn’t have
the time for it. Don’t beat yourself up if that happens. So, you know, one of the things I learned about
food and stuff was when I did this Body for Life program, right when I turned 50, and it was like a real
strict eating regimen, six small meals a day, you know, and the whole workout regimen. And so, but when I
found out was they, they gave us a cheat day. Oh, yeah, you eat six.
days, very strict on this regimen, and on the sixth day, I mean, seventh day, you can just eat
what you’re just, so I would just use Sunday. And so about three weeks into it, I said, good, I can
eat anything I want. I can’t remember what I ate that time, but it was like, I felt like a mule
mule kicked me in the stomach. I said, I was just eating that stuff all the time. It was that bad
for me that once I purify my system, that all of a sudden I eat that and it’s like, oh, so all of a sudden
you start, you know, not taking your cheat day anymore. So what happens, there’s a refinement.
Now, your mind will be inspired and grab.
to the word throughout the day when you just have that little bit of the word in it.
You will love God. Here’s where we’re going to be going with this. You’ll find out that
your love for God will grow. In other words, you’ve already shown him so, Lord, because I love you,
I’m going to read your word. And I’m just going to do this with the whole church. We’re just going
to take this. Anybody streaming online, let’s all do this together. And I’m not going to saddle
you with the whole chapter. I’m not going to saddlele you with reading the whole Bible. Now,
my wife is reading the whole Bible in a year, you know, doing the, but you know,
not everybody can do that. And even if you are doing that, if you add this to it and make sure that you have
this five minutes in the same passage that everybody else is in, you know, we’ll all be on the same page
as we’re going through this. But you’ll find out your love for God grows. What happens when your love
for God grows is he turns it back on you and you learn how to love yourself. There’s a lot of people,
like I said, they’ve just, they’ve been told so many lies by other people. I know,
Dr. Coughlin used to tell me about his father. His father was told by his parents, yeah, we
didn’t plan on having you. You were an accident. And he said, you know, when his father was
93 years old, I think, right before he died, and some of his memory was slipping, but that’s the
thing that stood out to him. He says, you know, I was a mistake. My parents never wanted to have
- He carried that for 93 years all the way to the grave. But you can love yourself. When you love God,
he starts causing you to see yourself the way he sees you as an ambassador.
When you start seeing yourself the way God sees you, you know what happens to me? I feel like my shoulders
go back. My posture gets better. My head goes up and I says, I’m an ambassador. Oh yes, I was going to
say about Stockholm. I saw the American ambassador’s house there in Stockholm and I said, man, if there was
any place I could be an ambassador, it would be for the United States to Stockholm.
Sweden, you know. And if you’re an ambassador, guess what? You don’t go on your own dime.
Yeah, they put you up in your own house and you’ve got a big salary and you’ve got access to all
these government leaders and you conduct major, big, important things. Well, that’s what
happens as an ambassador of God’s kingdom. You conduct major kingdom business for God. Every
place you go, every day. You know, the reality is we miss. We miss.
a lot of opportunities because we’re just not in the present loving God and loving ourselves and
understand we are ambassadors. But you’ll do this. You’ll love God. You’ll love yourself and you will love
others. When you love others, all of a sudden, you’re going to find yourself just like, listen, I hated
when they made us go out on the streets and do witnessing, you know, I did this evangelism program.
Well, that wasn’t for me. I’m not going to go out on the streets anymore. I did that. I got
punched in the face. I’m not doing that anymore.
Now, I’ve done a lot of that. I actually kind of like it. But I find there’s something much more
organic for each one of us that you find a way to be comfortable talking with other people. Now,
what I do is I ask, I don’t want to argue with religion with anybody. So if I want to witness to somebody,
I usually ask them the question. Ask them first if I can. Ask them a question. Do you mind if I
asked you a question? Oh, sure, go ahead. Do you believe in your heart that God raised Jesus from the dead?
Might as well just go and find out for sure if they know anything about the Bible.
Because the Bible says in Romans chapter 10, 9, and 10, that if you believe in your heart that God raised Jesus from the dead, you confess with your mouth, Jesus, Lord, you’re going to be saved.
For the heart man believes under righteousness and with a mouth confession is made under salvation.
So you might as well just go ahead and separate everything else.
So I ask them, do you believe in your heart, God raised Jesus from the dead?
Amazingly, a lot of times in the past, people were raised in church.
Now today you can witness to people and you can say, do you believe in your heart? God raised Jesus from the dead.
And you’re going, who’s Jesus? I mean, you know, they may have never been exposed to church or Christianity whatsoever.
You never can tell what your answer is going to be. But again, it can start the conversation. You can go right to Romans 10, 9 and 10.
And explain to them how to be able to guarantee you’re going to be going to heaven for eternity and being there with God, the Father, and with the Lord Jesus.
So you’ll love yourself.
Love God, love yourself, and you’ll love others.
And the next thing you’ll happen, you’ll learn to become the best version of yourself
that God intended you to be in your spiritual life, in your relationships, in your work, in your business life.
In other words, that’s that transformation where all of a sudden we just become the best version of ourselves.
And you don’t have to compare yourself with anybody else.
All you need to be is the best version of yourself.
You know, everybody’s insecure.
You see something.
Some of these people that you think, oh, there’s no reason for them.
They just look like the picture of just beauty.
and handsomeness and all this, and they’re smart.
And then you start talking to them, you find out these professional models and stuff,
oh, you’ve got to take my, got to take the picture from my good side.
And you’re going, yeah, I don’t see a bad side.
What are you seeing?
So when we take pictures now, it says, I haven’t had a good side in 30 years,
so it doesn’t matter, you know, where you’re talking.
But I can still be the best myself.
You know, because what happens, you realize, listen, I can.
I carry eternal life around with me.
I carry healing with me.
I carry the answers of the universe around with me at all times.
If I come across somebody that’s in need of something
and I start talking to him, I find out, maybe that’s the beginning of the conversation.
I noticed that you seem to be in pain.
Can I pray for you?
I’m going to pray in the name of Jesus.
He’s the healer.
And a lot of people say, well, yeah, you can pray.
I mean, I’ve done this before in grocery stores.
And people say, yeah, you’re going to.
You can pray for me. It was real easy when we lived in Tulsa.
Mostly if you were in Tulsa, everybody in the grocery store was already saved.
But if you needed healing, just go to the grocery store.
Ask almost anybody to pray for you. You’re going to be healed.
Another thing that’ll happen, you’ll live your best, most abundant life.
While making the world around you a better place, you’ll be passionately helping others
into the same experience that you have.
See, what happens is the purpose God wants us to be his ambassador
so that we would be constantly expanding into the kingdom.
How do you do it?
Every soul that comes into the kingdom, you just have helped expanding the kingdom.
For one thing, I have led, you know, maybe 40, 50 people to the Lord at a single time,
but there’s something about when you pray with one individual,
and they pray to receive Jesus, and when they open their eyes and you look at me,
you realize,
they just step from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of his dear son, the kingdom of
light, they are never going to be the same, especially if they get disciples.
They just get grown into the things of God that he wants to raise them up in.
And so just constantly winning souls.
Just something, what if each one of us won, let’s figure, okay, for the first year, let’s say five
minutes a day of reading the Bible, five minutes of prayer, let’s make it a goal to win
at least one person to the Lord.
Well, what if the next year you made the gold win at least two people?
I’ll guarantee you probably in a three or four years you’re going to be winning somebody
to the Lord every month.
Something will just happen because you realize what you carry around with you at all times,
the power and the presence of God.
And you also get just kind of tuned up in the consciousness of that presence of the Lord.
Now I’ve got a couple scriptures I want to read for you.
Go over to Psalm.
110.
And here’s what I want us to have as a vision of us building up God’s kingdom.
Because God said something about the son.
This was a Psalm of David, but it was about the Messiah’s reign.
And we know that Jesus, the one, the Messiah who came then,
there’s Jews today are waiting for another Messiah to come.
But their true Messiah always.
already came. And so anyway, he says this, the Psalm of David, Psalm 1 10, verse 1,
the Lord said to my Lord, that it means the Father in heaven, said to my Lord,
sit at my right hand till I make your enemies your footstool. God will keep expanding the kingdom
until all of Jesus’ enemies are made his footstool. This is the plan of God.
He said, well, I thought we’re going to have a rapture in the tribulation and say, forget that.
Get that out of your mind. That’s just a fear-based theology that’s going to just have you
looking, and I’ll probably bring in all the books and get them to you, you know, to show you.
This is, God’s going to keep building and expanding his kingdom.
Expect to be able to do this to your last breath.
And all of us have our own individual rapture.
I mean, all of us are going to, you know, go at some point in time.
Nobody gets off of planet Earth alive. You know, we’re all going to make a transition in the other realm.
Now, there is going to be a one point in time, and again, where there’ll be a big whole bunch of people changed all at one time.
But in again, we know that the purpose is God will make Jesus’ enemies his footstool.
Verse 2 said this, and the Lord shall send the rod of your strength out of Zion, rule in the midst of your enemies.
He will make Jesus able to be ruler over all the earth.
And his enemies are actually going to be vanquished and they won’t be on the earth.
When he else, he will still be ruling the earth.
verse 3 says, your people shall be volunteer.
We’re the volunteer army of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Your people shall all be volunteers in the day of your power.
We’re not volunteers in the day of Jesus’ weakness.
We’re volunteers in the day of his power.
He’s ruling and reigning from the right hand of the Father right now
for everybody who follows him.
We’re the ones that are following.
If we finally got, oh, let’s say 80% of the planet all born again,
oh my gosh.
We’d have, what, 7 billion people on it?
on the planet saved, that would be a pretty powerful army.
In the beauties of holiness from the womb of the morning, you have the due of your youth.
What he’s saying here, the morning is new every single day.
And so it’s kind of like a new birth every morning.
Because when you’re asleep, that’s the closest thing to a death state.
But your body needs that, needs to rest.
But you wake up in the morning, it’s like God’s saying, it’s like you got birthed into a new day.
I remember the day, it was just kind of weird to me.
I just got out of bed, and as soon as my foot hit the floor,
something shot out of my mouth, and I said it way out loud,
and I thought, where did that come from?
But I just, my foot hit the floor and I said, thank God for faith.
I thought, well, that’s a good saying, but why did I just have that come flying out of me?
Well, because faith is the currency of the kingdom we live.
- We get everything functioning in this kingdom by faith. So again, the beauties of holiness
from the womb of the morning, you have the due of your youth. God renews your youth,
your youth, like the Eagles. And so, you know, even as you get older, it does take more faith
to overcome aging, but, you know, you can still have your youth renewed every single day.
I tell everybody, it blows my mind, but for the most part, other than the fact that I can
injure myself. And I’ve done that, and I have to heal up from that. But most of the time,
I have no pain. Every time I try a new supplement to see if I feel better afterwards, I go, I don’t feel
anything different, because I already feel good. Now, I know they’re good for me, so I’ll go ahead and
keep taking them. It’ll extend my days more. But again, you’re just like, I already feel good. And
I can just keep going. I can keep doing. And so I realize this is a working. Well, I was mentored by
Kenneth E Hagan at his healing school while I was a student at Rama, and I started walking in
divine health. So for 45 years now, I basically haven’t had any real sick days. I’ve had some
head colds. I had a head cold a couple weeks ago. You know, so I can get to some of those things.
But I mean, I’d never had the flu again. I got healed from the flu when I was there, and I knew I was done
with the flu. Because up until then, I had faith for the flu. I got the flu every single year.
It just came along. It was like I was waiting for the devil to come knock on the door. And I’d open the
go on in Hong Kong flu. I’ve been waiting for you. And I would get sick.
But when I realized God didn’t want me to be sick and I got the flu and I got healed from it and was able to
I battled with it to like 4 o’clock in the morning. Then I realized I had to take authority over the devil
and I just stood up and I commanded him and said Satan, get your hands off my body. It’s the temple
of the living God. And the spirit of God came on me. I laid down, went to sleep, woke up three
hours later, completely healed. Let me tell you that that was my best day in class at
Ramah. I went there, I telling everybody, I got healed last night from the flu. And I’m done with
- And so when COVID-19 came along, I said, well, I’m not getting COVID-19 or 20 or 21 or 22 or 23 or
now we’re 26. I’m sure there’s a COVID-26. I’m not getting it. I refuse. So I like saying, you know,
well, I’ve had some marvelous opportunities to be sick, but I’ve learned how to pass them all up.
So I know that this will work, but he’s saying you have your youth renewed like,
the Eagles and so you can keep going on and running your race all the way to a finish line.
I believe that I should still be able to be up and mobile and no pain all the way to
- I believe that’s where I’m supposed to live to. Hopefully I get a chance to semi-retire
maybe to 100. I don’t know. Maybe you know, because I heard this one guy say, yeah, you retire,
you die. So I don’t want to die early. So I might never retire. Anyway, let’s look at this last
verse, verse four. The Lord has sworn and will not relent
you are priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.
Now, see, that’s what a lot of people say, well, I remember finding, you know, that from the
book of Genesis, that this high priest was the Melchizedek. That’s the one that Abraham
offered, offering to, and that it was a representative of the Lord Jesus. He had the same
never-ending priesthood, priest forever after the order of Melchizedek. So that
That’s who we’re walking with, the Lord Jesus. Now,
Let’s take a look at John chapter four.
I didn’t mention the 14th verse.
Just want to go back there, pull that one into place real quick, which says this.
And the word became flesh and dwelt among us and we beheld as glory the glory as the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.
If you have Jesus, you can also be full of grace and truth.
The grace of God.
We just sang about the amazing grace of God.
But that amazing grace of God brings us in the truth where Jesus said over in actually John
8, verse 31, if you continue in my word, let’s just go to that one, John chapter 8, verse 31.
I’ll just read it to you as Ryan’s getting at.
it up for you. And Jesus said to those Jews who believed him, see, there was a lot of Jews who
already believed in him at the time that he was walking the earth. And of course, they were the first
ones to get born again once he was raised from the dead, because they already believed he was
the Messiah. And once they saw him raised from the dead, they could be born again because
the Holy Spirit now was given for them to be born again. The Holy Spirit was always on the earth.
Holy Spirit fills the whole universe because he fills all of God’s kingdom. And he fills the created
universe as well.
There’s no place. David said, he says, where could I go? And I went to escape your spirit.
He says, even if I went into hell, your spirit’s there. Holy Spirit’s everywhere. But he wasn’t
given for salvation until Jesus was raised from the dead. But he says this, to those who believe,
if you abide in my word, if you’re a disciple reading five minutes a day, one page, it’s all it’s going
to take. I’m challenging you with this because I want to see you next year on maybe one.
have some big New Year’s Eve party together or something, just to celebrate the fact that you
became a true disciple and God transformed your life in one year. Because I’m guarantee you, things will
change. Things will be transformed in your life. If you abide in my word, then are you my disciples indeed,
and you will then know the truth, this verse 32, you will know the truth and the truth will make you free.
Now, the truth making you free has two parts to it. The first thing it does is
set you free because usually we all have a bunch of little bondages. Little lies of the devil
we were still told. You don’t realize how many of them are just stuck away in their subconscious mind.
Lies of the devil that keep you insecure about this, insecure about that. Afraid to step out and do this,
afraid to do this. And yet God’s gifted you with the ability to do all kinds of things that you
won’t tap into until you discover the truth and you get set free from the lies. You get set free
and then you have the power of God to keep you free. That’s what it is to be made free.
You’re set free originally and then you stay free all the days of your life. So I don’t know about you.
I’m signing up for this. Again, it’s a volunteer thing, but I want to ask you to join me in this
because I’d like a group of us to be able to go through. I believe in this. God’s got me thinking in terms of
every single one of these brown chairs being filled as a start. I mean, we would double in numbers
if every one of these chairs was filled. I believe we do that in one year.
And it might be more than that. I don’t know. But all I know is that only happens through
disciples. Disciples beget disciples. And when you’re excited about the things of God,
because God’s doing wondrous things in your life, you’re receiving miracles. And that’s what
we take the students through. It’s like, you know, solid foundation, how faith works, healing, provision,
Christ-like character. You know, we,
we disciple people for a living. We’ve been doing it for a long time. But I’m just going to
take a portion of this, knowing that we can do this as a church and we can watch things
transform in our lives that, again, we probably didn’t know we’re possible to happen in our lives.
Because again, as my wife was reading, you haven’t seen it yet. It’s got to be your vision that
you get from heaven seeing your life through God’s eyes. And when you start seeing your life through
God’s eyes, you don’t see yourself through your eyes anymore. And all the limitations
come off. You start realizing whatever you say, Lord, to do, we will do. We’ll do things that
we never dream we’d be able to do. Sometimes we look back and we go, I dreamed that we would do this
for 30 years and we would be up to 100 campuses. We had 100 campuses in the 7th year. So, you know,
Don’t limit God.
Because he will do the miraculous.
He will do incredible, wonderful things.
Now I’m going to pray, and if anybody has any specific needs,
this is going to be a church where we’re going to take the time
for pray for people’s specific needs.
But after we pray a general prayer for everybody,
you know, we can be dismissed.
We’ll have some worship music put on and come up and we’ll take, you know.
And what we’re going to be doing, oh, I need to say this too,
as we develop a team of, and some of you already have signed up,
you’re willing to be ushers because we’re going to need ushers to be working with us.
And so there will be a whole protocol for all of that, how to be on point.
We’ll actually have usher badges for you, and everybody will know when you’re an usher.
But we’ll do a rotation.
So everybody’s not always having to be on.
And so we’ll have usher support for ministry.
And that’s a ministry in itself.
When I was an usher for Brother Hagan, that was my mentorship into the Holy Spirit school.
Because I caught so many people.
that Brother Hagan laid hands on, and they’re under the anointing,
healing their body as I’m laying them down.
I think that’s why I started walking in divine health.
I kept absorbing that same anointing over and over again.
There is never any downside to serving the Lord.
And ushers, sometimes you’re at the point, you become tip of the spear in all of this.
And greeters.
You know, you’re the face forward.
Whenever a new person comes in, we want smiling, happy greeters.
Hi, how are you today?
You know, because it just changes the atmosphere for somebody who says,
oh, somebody invited me here, or even if they came with somebody.
But, you know, they don’t know what to expect.
But if somebody is really inviting when they get there,
I remember when y’all said,
Ryan was the first one that you met.
And he said, he just showed them around everywhere and said,
man, he did a good job as our greeter for the first day that came.
He didn’t even know he was on point as the greeter that day.
But, um,
and, and hospitality, there’s a number of things we’re going to have more.
Listen, everybody did such a bang-up job when we did our Christmas meal.
That was a feast.
That was a great celebration that day.
And so, again, we’ll have more of those.
Maybe every quarter, we need to have some sort of a big family dinner.
And just let everybody, you know, use all of their hospitality skills, you know.
I loved it.
Now, this sounds kind of crazy, but in my family, my mom’s side of the family is from South Georgia.
And I have been to a number of funerals in South Georgia.
Now, in South Georgia, when you go to a funeral, it’s awake.
I mean, they’re not Catholic, but what happens is they have a dinner afterwards.
And all these women, South Georgia, all consider themselves major cooks.
And they compete with one another for who makes the best desserts,
who makes the best meat dishes, who makes the best vegetable dishes.
And they lay out.
a feast that will actually almost put you in a grave because you can’t stop eating.
So they excel in hospitality in South Georgia, I can tell you.
It’s just a sad thing that you’ve got to go to a funeral to experience that.
How many times you’ve been to a funeral and says, man, we ought to really meet together like this,
but on a better occasion, you know, celebrating life rather than the end of life, you know.
But, hey, praise God when it’s a Christian.
I don’t think I don’t think I’m not.
I’ve ever done a, I don’t think I could do a funeral for an unbeliever because I’ve always
done a funeral is a celebration of this person’s life that we know just got escorted into
the glory of God. We’re all going to get one day. But that’s graduation day. We got a lot of work
to do before graduation day. We do, we conduct graduations every year. We’ve been in a lot of them.
But no, that graduation is the big one because that’s when you graduate into the long life, the real life.
one, the one that lasts forever and ever, never. But praise God. Father in Jesus’ name,
again, we thank you for this fresh start of the new year, that we will start off laying down a routine.
Life changes when we establish routines. Those routines will carry us through when we don’t feel
like doing it. We don’t have any motivation, no inspiration, but we still do it anyway, and we find
ourselves getting a solid benefit from that.
routine. And Lord, we want to be routine as disciples. Taking some of your word in every day,
letting you turn our attention to the truth that transforms our lives. And Lord, as we set ourselves
in motion for that, we just thank you. We already see transformation, changes that will be happening
in our lives. We anticipate by faith that’s stepping out.
with
a new, new fundamental tradition that we take, a discipleship program, Lord, that there’s just
going to be your voice speaking to us every single day, us getting divine guidance, like never
before. We’ll always know you’re with us whenever we go, so we’ll never be confused and
think that somehow we’re out on our own. We’ll sense the Holy Spirit’s presence as we go,
and will have no fear of anything you call us to do. So, Lord, in Jesus’ name, we start this this year
off right. And let me just have you say this with me. Father, I come to you in the matchless name of Jesus,
my Savior and my Lord. And I commit to be a disciple this year in a solid way, five minutes of the Bible every day.
One page in my New Testament and five minutes of prayer. And I know you will meet me there.
And you will fill my consciousness with your presence, with your word. And I’m asking you, Lord,
to fill my whole life with miracle presence, the divine intervention of God, changing things in my life.
They come into alignment with your will and your purpose for my life.
I desire, above all things, to hear those words when I graduate to heaven.
Well done, good and faithful servant.
Enter in to the joy of your Lord in Jesus’ mighty and matchless name.
Amen and amen. Praise God.
Hallelujah.
Well, I don’t know if I did you any good, but I’m happy. I’m happy today. I just, I’m excited
about what God’s got in store for us. And if I hadn’t preached the message, I still would have
been part of the volunteer army. I would have jumped in and said, yeah, I’m going to do that.
Because I know, and it’s just one of those things I’ve watched over and over and over again,
people thinking, oh, that’s, that’s not very much. Not asking one page and five minutes of prayer.
So it’s a foundation that you’re going to find.
out just brings that transformation in your life. So I expect to hear a lot of miracle
testimonies. More and more things changing. More things come into alignment with the plan of God
for our lives. So Father in Jesus’ name, I just want everybody to feel free to fellowship,
to greet one another, to make bonds and friendships with one another. But Lord, we want every need to be
met. So if anybody has a need, the need special prayer, Lord, I make myself available for that.
But Lord, let each one of us get a chance to meet more and more of this group that we just call
Life Christian Church. And we thank you that we’re smallest, small enough right now we can get to
know one another very well. And that’s just a great place to be where you can come someplace where
everybody knows your name. Everybody knows who you are and you get to be friends with everyone.
So in Jesus’ name, just build us up.
our fellowship with one another. And we just give you praise and thanksgiving for it.
Amen. Amen. Thank you, Lord. Praise God.