So it's been two weeks, so I need to re-review just a little bit here.
Get us on the same page. We're talking about vision.
We talked about purpose. This morning we're going to deal with sub-purpose.
And usually I don't wear a jacket. I didn't wear a tie this morning, so I didn't get quite as dressed up.
But people know that when I dress up like this,
it's because I have something really important
to say, so pay special attention.
It's not that other Sundays I don't have anything important,
but this is a little bit more important.
If we can understand, not only the church's purpose and sub-purpose,
but if you can understand your purpose and what we'll talk about this morning, sub-purpose,
everything else in that book that you have hangs on this.
This is the heart of the whole thing, especially sub-purpose.
This, you know, we won't be going through that book page by page by any means,
but there's some key things we need to understand.
This is one of them. So let's go back and review.
We talked about purpose. Purpose being the reason we're on this earth.
As individuals, the reason churches are formed, etc.
It's the thing God wants us to accomplish while we're here.
And it could be more than one. It could be numerous things.
But there's going to be one big focus.
It's the need you, as people, individuals, I were created to fill.
Meet that need.
And we talked about that. We gave you some examples from Scripture on that.
Churches are the same thing as individuals.
I don't want to dwell as much on individuals.
That's in the other booklet or book.
Once they're 170 pages long, I got to quit calling them booklets.
It's in the other book.
Deals more with individuals on expanding the vision is what that one's called.
This one dwells more on word of life.
But a person and the church and how God works with them are so similar,
they kind of just splash back and forth.
Every Christian church has the same purpose.
That's on page 12 of your booklet.
I don't care if you're a Catholic church, a Methodist church,
a Lutheran church, a Baptist church, it makes no difference.
Scripturally speaking, we all have the same purpose
we're supposed to all accomplish the same thing.
Every Christian, the same thing is true.
Every Christian has the same purpose.
To promote and advance the kingdom of God.
That's the purpose.
And again, it's in that expanding the vision book
where that's explained more deeply.
This is what makes us different.
It's our sub-purpose.
Now, sub-purpose is what lies beneath...
If you have a structure, you have a substructure.
And the substructure is tied to the structure.
Depending upon how big the structure is on top,
you've got a big substructure.
If you're dealing with tall building, Sears Tower,
things like that, skyscrapers, huge substructure
under the ground, we never see.
If you're dealing with terrain, you have sub-terrain.
And the government figured out that you can sell
the land that the people see on the top,
and you can sell the minerals
that are sub-terraneous.
And they're worth something too.
During the Depression, the state of North Dakota
pulled kind of a dirty trick.
Usually the mineral rights went with the land,
but people were trying so hard to hang on to the land
that, you know, make a long story short,
the state of North Dakota separated them,
and you could actually buy the mineral rights
on somebody's land.
They wouldn't own them anymore.
They'd own what you see on the top.
You could own the sub-terranean realm.
It didn't seem like a big deal until
oil and things like that were discovered,
and they come in and they rip your field up
because they're going for what's underground,
and there's not one thing you can do about it.
You don't own what's underground.
You own what's on top.
Isn't that exciting?
So anytime you've got something on top,
you've got something underneath.
We have a purpose. We have a sub-purpose.
It's the deeper level.
Still reviewing.
Churches and believers' sub-purpose
is the individualized plan
of how God's going to use you.
The big purpose, we're all supposed to do
the same thing.
But how you do it, how you do it,
how I do it can be extremely different.
That comes in the sub-purpose.
That's what's underneath
holding the whole thing up
and making it work.
That's what makes us individuals
is how God wants to do it through you.
He wants to do the same thing through you
as He's doing through me, as He's doing through anybody.
But how He does it is totally different.
It's designed by God that way.
He built it into us.
Psalm 139, I believe, he built it into us
when we were in the mother's womb.
That's where he wove us together.
And that's where our...
I say this, it's like a homing beak
and it's like a migrating bird.
It's, if we will get rid of the clutter
in our life, we will be drawn
to the reason we're here.
It will be what we want to do.
And the same as for churches.
If we'll get rid of the clutter,
we will slide right into what we're here for,
what we're supposed to do.
He instilled it into our heart.
And there's a scripture that, it's psalms 37, verse number 4.
And it's often misquoted, in my opinion.
It says, well, God will give you the desires of your heart.
We like to quote that from the American church's perspective.
Selfish.
Well, I've always wanted, and doesn't the scripture say
that he would give me what I want?
No.
It's not what it's talking about.
There are desires he put in your heart.
He will give you those desires
if the word in the King James is delight,
which is really a bad translation.
If you delight in the Lord,
he will give you the desires of your heart,
the desires he already put there.
The word delight means to be soft and pliable.
It doesn't mean to be happy.
Doesn't mean that.
If we would directly translate it according to definition,
it would say, if you will be soft and pliable,
in the Lord.
He will give you the desires of your heart.
They're already in there.
But until we get soft and pliable
and let him get in charge,
they won't come out.
So, it's easy.
Just got to...
just what happened in praise and worship.
Got to give it up.
So here's a little chart we made.
We're talking about the general purpose this morning, the sub-purpose.
Once you have those two, everything else just falls together.
I'm not going to take the time to describe it much.
We'll be coming back to that a bit.
Vision...
Let me back up.
Vision is simply seeing that little graph in our life.
We see why I'm here.
We see what I'm supposed to accomplish
and how it's supposed to work through me.
And then built on that, he'll give you different assignments,
projects you're supposed to take care of.
He'll give you different commands, things that he is not giving you an option on.
You do it this way.
And vision, when we say, well, you know, we got to have a vision.
Word of life's vision.
Vision is merely seeing what we're supposed to do
and how we're supposed to do it.
It's the same for you.
Vision is just simply seeing
what you're supposed to do
and how you're supposed to do it.
Some of you are supposed to promote the kingdom of God by being a carpenter.
Some of you are supposed to promote the kingdom of God by being a singer.
And not necessarily in church.
By being a football player.
You pick it.
You've got the seven mountains.
You've got the seven realms of society.
He will plug people into all of them.
And that's how he is going to reach into those areas and advance his kingdom.
So, some people will say, I don't know why I have such a desire.
I never had the desire because my dad made me pay for everything I broke.
But some of my friends had such a desire to be racers.
You know, whether it was motorcycle or car or snowmobile or whatever.
They just love to race.
And that's okay.
Till you break something and it costs you thousands of dollars.
And dad says, I ain't paying for it.
You wanted to do that.
I'm going, oh that takes care of that.
I had a scrambler motorcycle, a dirt bike.
And we got together one Sunday afternoon.
And there was two guys who were just kind of like daredevils.
They were adults.
They had the money to fix what they broke.
So we all got together and then we picked some hills
and they were going to see if they could climb them.
And they tried in the worst way to get me to climb it.
And I said, I ain't doing it.
I said, even if I could, I'm not going to.
Because if I mess my bike up, I lost my bike
because I don't have the money to replace it.
Well, we're going to do it anyway.
And I remember this one guy, he eventually made it.
It was a difficult hill to get up.
And he eventually made it.
But he made it almost to the top.
It stopped on him.
It dug in the ground.
He couldn't hold it.
He tried to lay it over, but it was steep enough.
It started sliding.
So then it caught and started rolling.
Rolled all the way down the hill.
And I said, that's exactly why I'm not going to do that.
Well, I'll just fix it up.
I said, you know, that's good.
Fix it up.
What gives someone a desire to do that?
Because God needs people in that community
who will promote His kingdom.
You can't affect that community if you're not in it.
But if you're in it because you just want to have fun,
well, you still can't affect the community.
There's more to it than that.
Vision is simply seeing, getting a revelation of who you are,
why you're here.
Now, if you'll go to page number 16,
we're going to jump in.
Well, that's where we're going to start.
16 and 17.
And I want to point something out to you.
Most of the points here in our sub-vision,
our sub-purpose, it is a sub-division purpose,
but our sub-purpose on 16 and 17
actually are supposed to be in every church.
But it's become one of the reasons of how we do it
and what he's asked us to do
because so many other churches refuse to do it.
Everybody should be doing it.
It should be actually part of the purpose,
but there's so many who aren't
that God picks certain people in certain churches
and says, you emphasize this.
So we've been asked to emphasize and focus on some things
that's simply because they're part of the gospel.
They're part of what God promises us,
but churches and believers are ignoring them.
So go to page 17.
Now, I have a confession to make.
Could you bring that up on the screen, if you would, please?
The booklet, page 17, slide down.
There should be a letter E there.
So you got D, 1, and E.
Not all your books have that.
I was at TBO and it's one of these things of technology.
I was at TBO and it was the night
before we started using this
and Abby was at the office
diligently working to get them printed.
And I'm sitting there and the Holy Spirit
taps me on the shoulder and says,
you should have put letter E under sub-purpose.
And I'm going, thanks a little late now.
So everything's all hooked together
and she's printing off my computer at home.
So I take my iPad and I grab some stuff
from our vision, that part of it right there.
And I plugged it into the document and sent it.
So while she's printing, some of you have that
and some of you don't.
If you don't have that, please write it in.
Especially letter E.
I think it starts with number 1 under D
and then letter E.
And it's supposed to be underlined
like the other ones are,
but I was in a hurry so I didn't.
So let's start with that one
because it colors everything else.
And we'll go back up to top page 16
and just give you an overview of this.
A large aspect of our sub-purpose
at Word of Life,
now we're talking to church now,
is we are a how-to church,
which puts a lot of demand on the leadership
because we're supposed to know how to
do some of this stuff.
And it puts a lot of push on that.
Now I want to take you to page
oh, go to page 27.
I want to just refer you to something.
The vision of a person's family
comes out of mom and dad,
or however the leadership structure is set up.
It could be mom or dad,
or mom and dad.
The reason your family runs the way it is
is because that's how you feel
God wants you to run it.
That's your sub-purpose.
It's part of how you're supposed to do things
and promote the kingdom.
Well, when it comes to ministries,
this one, this book is talking about church,
when it comes to churches,
the reason a church runs the way it does
primarily goes back to the pastor.
It's what's in the pastor's heart.
That's why if you hire someone
who does not have what that church,
what the church's focus is,
the church's emphasis is,
they don't have that in their heart,
it usually becomes a problem.
Because every church is supposed
to flow a certain way.
Now, we all supposed to do the same thing
in the general purpose.
But how we do it?
Remember, there's cowboy churches,
there's recovery churches,
there's missions churches,
there's all kinds of different ways
God uses a church.
That's all good.
We're not a cowboy church.
We do give to missions,
but it's not our main reason for being.
The main reason that boils inside of me,
which produces this,
and it boils in Mary also,
is people need to know how
to do this stuff.
Jump over to page 28.
I'm going to take the time to refer to this.
Remember I said this stuff's put in you
in your mother's womb?
Then as you grow older,
if you just get the clutter out of the way
you'll be drawn right into it.
It's very easy.
Remember a vision
or to see how something should be done.
That whole big graph there
is birthed out of a person.
We're at the bottom of page 28, letter E.
What does it mean to be a how-to church?
To understand this means
we need to see a little of how it came about.
So this is how it came about for me.
It originated in me.
I was born in a Christian home.
My parents belonged to the Assemblies of God
and that's neither here nor there.
It's just my history. It's who I am.
So I was exposed to more full gospel things
than if you were born...
like Mary was born in Lutheran.
She wasn't exposed to as much full gospel stuff.
I was exposed to more
even though a lot of times it didn't happen.
I was exposed to it. I knew about it.
Went to church a lot.
That's explained on the bottom.
So I got to listen to a whole lot of different ministers
in my growing up years
and how they would present things.
Page 29.
Third paragraph down. It's indented a little bit.
We were always being shown from the Bible,
from the Word,
what we're supposed to do to be a Christian.
But rarely did anybody address how to do it.
We're supposed to love each other.
Okay, cool. What does that look like?
Well, you know, we're supposed to love each other.
So what does that mean? How do I do that?
Well, just love them.
It's like, boy, you're just going deep quick here.
We're supposed to have faith in God.
Okay, what does that look like?
Give me what it means to believe.
Well, you believe.
We're believing God for stuff, so what are you doing?
How does that come out of you?
Well, you just believe.
Okay.
Well, what I'm doing isn't working.
Well, you just keep believing.
You haven't told me anything but what I'm supposed to do.
It's like a bad teacher at school.
Trying to teach you math.
Well, you just divide the bottom number by, you know,
divide the top number by the bottom number.
Well, how do I do that? Well, just do it.
Well, I don't know how to do it.
Well, it says right there, just 20 divided by 5.
Give me the answer.
Well, what's wrong with you?
Everybody who comes to the math class should know how to divide.
We'd say, what's wrong with that teacher?
Well, I'm growing up saying, what's wrong with the church?
We give all these things, oh, you're supposed to do this.
You're supposed to live like that.
Nobody's saying how it's supposed to be done.
Which made me question if they knew themselves.
Knowing what I know at this point, I'm reading now the fourth paragraph,
I can look back and say what was the beginning of me seeing my sub-purpose for life.
I was starting to see the vision of what I was supposed to be.
I remember it began with questions about how these things are...
about how we are supposed to do these things.
Then it moved into frustration and aggravation.
You've got to be really careful when that happens because that's when you get critical.
Start talking bad mouthing.
I watched people around me stumbling through life,
trying to do what they were being taught out of the word.
Well, God wants you healed. Let's pray for healing.
Okay, it didn't work. Now what?
Well, let's pray again.
Just believe God.
Okay, it's still not working.
How do I do this?
Well, we're just going to pray.
And that's why the answers we get are about that thick.
We don't give many answers because we don't know how to do it.
So I watched people being taught,
oh, we do this, do that, didn't know how to do it.
And in church, oh yeah, they're in agreement
and in their personal lives, it's a disaster.
Yet they were struggling to make it happen in many areas of their lives.
Once I knew I was going into the ministry, this became my theme.
Why? Because that's what he created me.
That's the need he wants me to fill.
To whatever degree I can show people how to do this,
which requires me to figure it out before I try to tell them.
I'm not going to just tell people what God has for them.
God wants you prospered.
Well, that's good. How do I do that?
Well, you've got to work hard.
Well, I know a lot of people work hard and they win bankrupt.
They win broke.
How do I prosper?
Well, the Bible says God will make us prosper.
Cool. What do I do?
Well, you just need to get a job and work.
I know a lot of people who've got jobs and work really hard
and they're on the edge of financial destruction all the time.
And they're Christians.
So apparently, that doesn't work.
And see, the worst thing you can do as a junior...
This started to boil in me in junior high.
The worst thing you can do in junior high or early high school
is bring that up to a bunch of adults.
You know, you're not helping me know how to do this
and from my observation, what you're doing doesn't work.
I learned the hard way not to say it that way.
So that thing started boiling inside of me.
So as a result, what flavors everything we do is, yes,
this is what God has for us.
This is some of the ways of how to do it.
And we don't by any means know all of them.
We know just the very thin slice of the pie,
but we know enough to make it work.
And other people have been taught different things
that make it work.
And through the whole group of the body of Christ,
we can make it work.
But the only way that you're going to know how
is you have to be shown how.
Otherwise, it's just one wreck after another.
So go back to page 16.
So here is the overview of who we are, our sub-purpose.
We are a full gospel church.
And then there's a number.
The rest of this page kind of tries to explain that.
Now, every church is supposed to be a full gospel church,
because we all read the same Bible.
So the only reason this has been pointed out to us
to be this is because so many are not,
and there's a need in this area for full gospel churches.
It's one of the reasons you're here.
Most of you say the same thing.
I can't find anything that goes along with what I feel
God wants me to serve him like.
I believe in some of these things,
and there's nobody else out there doing it.
So you end up here.
That's how God works, because he pulls people together
of like-mind, like-vision, and molds us together,
and then we work together to do what he's asking us to do.
That's why the last message I said,
this church is not for everybody.
Not everybody has it in their heart
to be pulled the direction God's pulling us.
That's okay.
I just want to do what he's asking me to do.
How big it gets is not my issue, it's his.
Follow me?
The general purpose that every church is to accomplish,
we emphasize the fullness of the gospel.
It could also be said we emphasize Pentecostal,
Charismatic, prophetic, faith aspects of the gospel, etc.
So what is the general purpose?
So go back to page 12.
Let's just remind ourselves of this.
This is what every church is called to do.
Top of page 12, defining word of life,
vision, jump down to Roman numeral one.
God-given purpose for word of life.
Letter A, every Christian church has the same
general five-fold purpose in this scripture.
Every church is supposed to evangelize
or get people saved.
Okay?
When we're evangelizing someone,
you can...
some churches don't even try to get people saved,
which means they're even missing that one.
That's the core one, that's the biggest one.
But when you're getting people saved, you can say,
okay, let's say the sinner's prayer,
let's get you saved, I don't know.
Someone who is of the full gospel persuasion
will not stop there.
Okay, you're saved, good.
Now you're going to get to heaven.
No, you know what you need next?
You need the baptism of the Holy Spirit.
So let me help you get into that.
You need to be baptized in water.
Now many churches do that, but some don't.
Not the scriptural way.
Baptized in Scripture means immersion.
It doesn't mean you had something squared on your face.
That's not... you can't find that in Scripture.
It means immersion.
And there's other churches that do that.
But you need to be baptized in water.
You need to be baptized in spirit.
You're saved now.
You need to be delivered to some things.
Everybody who's got their head screwed on straight
knows you got some demons.
See, now only full gospel people will talk that way.
Because we've seen that.
We've experienced that.
So that is who we are.
That is what God asks us to promote.
There's people in all kinds of churches this morning
who are struggling to live a victorious Christian life
because they're still demonically bound as a Christian.
And they need some deliverance.
And you can't even bring it up in their church
because they're going to think you're nuts.
So there's a need.
So what does God do?
He creates someone to help fill that need.
It's all part of evangelization.
And by the way, I noticed when you were walking in,
you were limping.
Now that you're saved,
it's your inheritance right to be made whole.
It's guaranteed and promised to you.
Let's pray for you.
See how a full gospel person
will evangelize a little differently
than someone who's not.
Worship. Every church is called to worship.
There's many different ways to worship.
It's supposed to come out of our heart.
Jesus said...
Not Jesus.
Yes, Jesus said,
they that worship must worship in spirit and in truth.
So it's supposed to come out of our spirit
and it's supposed to be done...
How would you say honestly,
transparently, truth?
Not playing a game, not putting on a mask.
We go to church, everybody stands,
we sing songs off the wall.
There we're worshiping. That's not worship.
Worship is when it comes out of your spirit
and you honestly engage.
You say, well, not all churches are like that.
They're supposed to be.
But I agree, they're not.
For instance, they got caught on that one course this morning.
Well, that's where they were supposed to get caught.
And do you notice the longer they stayed there,
the heavier it got in here?
The more the presence of the Holy Spirit built,
that's worship.
They could have sang it once, moved on,
and we would have never experienced
the presence of the Holy Spirit like we did.
So a full gospel person says,
there's always more
to tap into here.
Not every church believes that.
And that's between them and God.
Not my issue, it's between them and God.
I'm just saying, this is how we think.
Partnership.
I'm not going to take the time to read
1 John 1-3, but it really describes there
what we have seen, what we have heard,
what we have gazed at,
what we have touched with our hands.
In other words, we not only heard about it,
we saw it happen.
We not only saw it happen, we've studied this.
And we've been personally involved.
We've watched it happen through us.
This we proclaim concerning the Word of Life.
If you don't like healings, miracles,
supernatural encounters with God,
you're not going to like this church.
Because that's who we are.
I love supernatural encounters with God.
And when His presence shows up so heavy,
it's like, man, it's hard to breathe.
Oh man, give me more of that.
Now I'm going to make a statement.
From my perspective, could be wrong,
but from my perspective,
most people who call themselves Christians are afraid of that.
Because they never experience it in their life
or in their church.
Sometimes people would get up and walk out
in the best part of the service.
As far as I'm concerned, it's like,
oh man, God's in the house.
They just get up and walk out.
You talk to them later, they go,
oh that just freaked me out.
I don't know what's in there,
but man, I could feel it.
I've never felt that before.
And it's just weird.
Would you ever go to church?
Oh yeah, I go to church,
but I've never felt anything like that.
That's why we're here.
That's part of our sub-purpose.
To create an atmosphere that will bring the presence of God
that people can partner with.
He can do more in one minute of you being in his presence
than I can do in a lifetime of trying to help you.
It's just unbelievable what he can do.
Discipleship.
Not just hearing what God can do,
but doing it.
And proclaiming it.
Ministry. Service.
In some churches,
men do all the ministry
and women clean up the mess.
That's between them and God.
If that's how they feel they should run it,
that's none of my business.
But what I see Scripture saying is
Jesus was the greatest champion of women
who ever came to this earth.
Paul says he took them and elevated them
to equal status with man.
Marriage is separate.
There's an order there
because Adam and Eve and Eve sinned and so forth.
There's an order there.
So pull marriage out of the picture.
Just men and women serving God.
Women can pray for healing as much as a man can.
Women can prophesize as much as a man can.
Women can have visions as much as a man can.
Women can raise a dead as much as a man can.
Women can be on the board of the church
as much as a man can.
Scripture says men and women,
there's not male, female.
We're all equal.
From God's perspective,
when it comes to ministry,
he's not looking at your sex.
It's everybody's got the right
to flow and to minister and to move.
Okay?
That's different than a lot of churches.
Well, we ain't gonna let the women.
You remember what Eve did.
Yeah, I know what Eve did.
You remember what Adam did?
Eve got tempted and made a mistake.
Adam was standing right there
and willfully chose to do wrong.
So if you have two children,
one makes a mistake and crashes the car,
and the other one decided
to drive down your driveway at 90 miles an hour
and see if they could make the corner.
Willfully!
Which one are you gonna cut more slack?
So don't come beating on women.
To me.
Yeah, Eve made a mistake.
But Adam, that jerk.
What the world were you thinking, man?
When God forgives us,
he forgets.
That's who we are.
Ministry service.
I can name churches I had friends
part of that when the people were teens
or early 20s, they made a mistake.
Either they didn't know, couldn't figure it out,
something was going on, but somehow she got pregnant.
Didn't make any difference what they did
from that point forward.
That man was limited to only doing a few things at church.
He was not allowed to do everything anymore.
He could never be on the board or be in leadership.
Because when he was 21, he made a mistake.
That's just a recipe for a good old boys club.
That's all it is.
Because if they actually ask forgiveness,
God doesn't even remember what they did.
So why are we holding it over their heads?
They're 73 years old.
Hello, cut them some slack.
Well, that's really different.
I know that's part of our sub-purpose.
That's who we are.
What does full gospel mean?
Let's jump through these really quickly.
It means we believe everything, page 16, number two.
We believe everything presented in the New Testament
is available for all of us today.
Nothing passed away.
Nothing went away.
It's all here for us today in the New Testament.
The five-fold, we believe all five-fold are active.
They should be represented in every church.
Apostles have not passed away.
Prophets have not passed away.
They're here.
We make room for them to operate.
The baptism with the Holy Spirit
is an experience apart from salvation.
It's subsequent to salvation.
It is for everyone.
Primary purpose is not to speak in tongues.
Primary purpose is to receive power.
And if I would rewrite this book,
I would go back and add in what we talked about
coming out of Matthew.
And when you...
John the Baptist was talking...
I'm going too fast.
John the Baptist was talking about
what Jesus was going to do
and how he was going to baptize us
with the Holy Spirit and fire.
The Holy Spirit is here to clean us up.
And as he cleans us up, he empowers us.
We don't get baptized in the Holy Spirit
so we speak in tongues.
That's a different aspect of it.
But the heart of it is
he's here to clean us up and help us
and empower us.
And it does not happen
when you get saved.
You receive the baptism in the Holy Spirit.
I can show you four or five examples in Scripture.
Just bam, bam, bam, bam in the book of Acts.
It's not how it works.
It's subsequent.
And once we've experienced it, we can say,
oh yeah, that's different.
That's something separate from getting saved.
That's who we are.
So we don't believe.
Well, you got saved.
You had the baptism in the Holy Spirit.
No, you don't.
I was saved for years before I got baptized
in the Holy Spirit.
In fact, it was one of my
trump cards I was holding in my back pocket
so I wouldn't have to go in the ministry.
Seriously.
As a young boy,
I knew, I just knew,
I'm supposed to be minister.
And I didn't want to be minister.
These people did not impress me.
And I saw a lot of them
because remember, I was a church a lot.
And it was stressed,
if you're going to be a minister,
you need to be baptized in the Holy Spirit.
Well, I was saved.
I didn't want to go to hell,
so I was going to heaven.
But I was not baptized in the Holy Spirit
in order to have any intentions to be.
Because as long as I'm not,
I don't have to go in the ministry.
So I have a legitimate out.
In the fall of my eighth grade year,
he snuck it in on me.
And I remember,
I still remember it.
It was on a Wednesday night.
We were at church.
Everybody was praying.
They had a, it was a good tradition,
a habit of everybody
knelt down by their chairs
and prayed at the end of service
for five, ten minutes.
I'm an eighth grader.
I don't have a care in the world.
I have a good family.
I've got all the food.
And yeah, I haven't got nothing
to pray about, Ron.
I just goofing off.
Got to kneel down
because of mom and dad.
See, you're sitting there.
That ain't going to go well.
So I'm kneeling down, goofing off.
So I had nothing else to do.
So I heard some people
speaking in tongues around me.
I thought, I'm going to imitate that.
I wonder if I can do that.
So I imitated it.
Tried to say what they were saying.
And I did that for maybe a minute.
And then this thought
went through my mind really strongly,
which now I know where it came from.
And you'll recognize right away.
Thought went through my mind,
you need to stop doing that.
You're making fun of God.
Well, you know where that thought came from.
Stop it.
You're hanging out too close
to the edge of the water here.
You could fall in.
Stop it.
And I don't know,
maybe a German side of me.
I don't know what it was.
I just...
I think I even whispered it.
I don't believe that.
God knows what I think.
I can do what I want.
And the next word...
Pow!
It shifted into gear.
And I could...
It just overwhelmed me.
And I'm speaking in tongues.
This, that, and the other.
And the first thought
that went through my mind
shows you where my mentality was at.
So God doesn't always go,
you don't have to be good enough for God.
He'll work on the good enough later.
First thought went through my mind.
Ah, crap.
Now I got it.
I got to go into ministry.
That's how I got it.
So if you're looking for a real holy experience,
you may not want to come to me.
Once we're baptized in the Holy Spirit,
we believe all nine gifts
are available to people.
Full gospel means we believe in healing,
miracles, signs, wonders, dreams,
visions, supernatural manifestations,
and experiences.
They're available to everybody.
You don't have to be good enough.
You don't have to be a certain kind of person.
They're available to everybody.
Number three is that it is the Holy Spirit,
the third person of the Trinity
who works all these things in us.
He's the one who anoints us with power
for all these things to take place.
Therefore, we try in this church
to stay in step with the Holy Spirit.
That's why they were singing
and they almost quit.
And I thought, no, you can't quit yet.
So I got up and came up here.
I thought, I ain't going to let you quit.
This is where it's supposed to go.
And then they came back again.
Then I said a couple of things
and they went a couple more
and then they started going down again.
I said, no, keep this going.
Because that's the direction
the Holy Spirit was going
because he was working on some of us.
In that presence,
some of you were being really bothered
with the question,
you need to give it all over to God.
Why aren't you?
The Holy Spirit was working on you
and he wanted that atmosphere
to stay intact.
The presence, the anointing
of the Holy Spirit
is really, really important here
because it's really, really important to me.
Bottom of that page, Top of 17,
we believe that he personally
communicates with us
to accomplish what he wants done.
He's able to speak to us
in many ways.
For you to understand why we emphasize
that so much,
you have to understand
how he trained me.
So up until I got baptized
in the Holy Spirit,
I was kind of a goof-off.
As you probably figured out
from my reaction
to the baptism of the Holy Spirit,
I was like, oh, man.
Kind of a goof-off.
But once, that was the fall
of my eighth grade year.
Once that took root
but over the winter,
by the next summer,
everything had changed in me.
Not because I was trying
to change a thing.
It's because he was starting
to change me.
Okay, so I grew up
on a farm ranch setting.
We had a few thousand acres
of ground that we worked
and we had a lot of cattle,
which I didn't care for the cattle in.
I never did like cattle.
But they have to have hay made
for them and so forth,
so I was very active in that side.
So between those two,
and at that point,
we still summer-fellowed
50% of the ground.
So in other words,
you plant half,
and the other half,
you would keep the weeds down.
You'd have to work at every couple of weeks
if you had a wet summer.
Keep the weeds down
so the moisture would replenish.
And then you would plant that
the next year
and the stuff that you took
the crop off,
you would summer-fell that.
So half of our ground,
we were working all summer long.
Keep the weeds down
and let the moisture accumulate.
It's how they did it back then.
Now they do no till farming,
so it's a whole different thing.
That's how we did it.
So between cutting hay,
raking hay,
working on the field all summer long,
I spent days and days,
hours and hours.
We'd try to get breakfast
and if dad was up at 4.4.30,
he'd get everything fixed
and greased and going.
And he never required me
to be up there standing
and watch him do that.
Thank God.
He'd come in for breakfast
around 7.
That's when I got up.
We had breakfast
and then everybody's out the door
about 8
and suffers not till 9 at night.
So the average day was 12, 13 hours.
That's 6 days a week.
That's just the way it was.
Most of that time you're riding
on a tractor,
a swath or a combine,
a truck.
You're driving.
You're doing something.
And a lot of it is kind of
mindless work.
It doesn't take a lot of concentration.
So what happened over that period of time
is the Holy Spirit
started moving in on me
and I started experiencing his presence.
Worked with me.
I'll get there.
Between my freshman and sophomore year,
there was a demonic attack on me.
I almost died,
which made me very serious.
I realized, oh,
this isn't the game.
This is for real.
Well now, not only was he trying
to move in on me,
I started reaching back.
And the hours
and the hours
and the hours of sitting,
driving,
that the presence of the Holy Spirit
would just come
so heavy.
I would just weep
and weep for hours.
Many times I had to turn around
because I missed where I was supposed to go.
I couldn't see.
Can't see where I'm going.
I had to loop around and hit that again.
I missed a whole bunch of weeds.
It just would go on for hours,
days at a time.
That was my secret place,
like Igor was talking about.
That's where I met with God.
Now he didn't talk to me much back then.
But man, I learned to recognize
when he was around,
when his presence would come,
when his anointing would come.
I got so sensitive to that
over the next eight years,
six, eight years
before I left home and went off.
That is why
it is extremely important
that at church
we sense the presence of God.
That was the groundwork
he laid for me.
Because it's in the presence of God
he works.
That's where he changed his lives.
You can listen to me till the cows come home.
Might be like water off a duck's back.
Do nothing.
You sit in the presence of God
and get real with him for five minutes.
You will never be the same person again.
Never be the same person again.
And I sat in this for hours and hours and hours.
I began to understand
I could feel what he felt.
He began teaching me that.
What he was feeling I would feel
and I can't go into that,
but he started showing me.
He didn't say much to me,
but he just let me sense him.
And what he was dealing with
and how he was approaching things and so forth.
And folks, I just...
Once you've experienced that,
it's a joke to live without it.
It's like a bad joke.
Once you've experienced
how it's supposed to be
and the intimacy you can have
and Almighty God himself
comes and starts dealing with you.
Once you've experienced that
to sit in church
and he don't show up at all,
he's like, pfft,
give me a break.
I'll quit the ministry and do something else.
We're not doing it. This is a joke.
Now I'm, again,
other churches do what they want.
They're going to answer for it between them and God.
But I'm with Moses.
If your presence doesn't go with us,
I ain't going.
I ain't going. I want nothing to do with this.
If your presence doesn't show up,
churches where the Holy Spirit
should be free to do what he wants to do
and manifest and get into our dirt
like he did this morning
or encourage us and so forth.
So we have a strong...
It's who we are. It's what drives us.
It's what makes us who we are.
It's about the presence of God.
And, you know, sometimes we put on the sign out front,
come and experience the presence of God.
And I had somebody get upset with me about that.
Who do you think you are?
Do you think there's not the presence of God
in other places?
No, he's around, but he sure don't manifest much.
For those of you who were here when Igor was here,
remember the first thing he said
on that first Sunday morning?
God put him on a mission to go visit all kinds of churches.
They had visited 52 churches in one year.
Every Sunday they're a different church.
And he could count on one hand with fingers left over.
How many had the presence of God show up in the service?
See, it becomes our sub-purpose, not because
oh, you think you're special.
No, it has nothing to do with us being special.
It has to do with our heart is after God
and I want more than to just learn about him.
I want to experience him.
I want to breathe what he breathes.
I want to feel what he feels.
I want to experience him.
I just don't want to hear about him.
I don't have to waste a Sunday morning just hearing about him.
Page 17, letter B.
We strongly emphasize praise and worship,
especially in church setting.
Obviously that's scriptural.
I don't think I have to convince you of that.
Our belief is,
as long as you don't do damage to someone else,
praise and worship, how you want to praise and worship.
If you got a flag, watch who you're wrapping in the head.
Because it could interfere with their praise and worship.
If you want to lay on the floor and praise and worship,
you lay on the floor.
If you want to dance, you dance.
If you want to raise your hands, you raise your hands.
If you want to do the heaven forbidden thing in a lot of churches,
if you want to shout, you go give it.
You shout.
You praise and worship according to what's coming out of your heart.
And let's go there.
Otherwise it's not real praise and worship.
I mean, anybody can sing songs.
That's not praise and worship.
Singing songs is not praise and worship.
It's engaging with God.
That's praise and worship.
Scripture says he takes pleasure in the prosperity of his people.
Yes, we believe in prosperity.
If you want to believe in poverty, you go ahead.
I'm fine with that.
I have a number of scriptures listed there.
I have a whole bunch.
The Scripture says the Father takes pleasure in the prosperity of his people.
The first word that came out of Jesus' mouth at his first message
had to deal with prosperity.
He was teaching the people how to prosper.
He said, blessed are those who.
The word blessed means to be empowered to prosper
and have success down the road,
which makes you happy, which deals with emotions.
It's all in the definition.
The first thing that Jesus declared was prosperity.
Because the thief comes to steal, kill, and destroy.
He comes to take it away.
But Jesus said, I've come to give you more than you can handle.
Give you life abundantly, beyond what you can handle.
So, yeah, do we believe in prosperity?
Absolutely we believe in prosperity.
I'm running out of time, so I don't have time to sit on it.
Letter D, everything that Jesus brought for us
on the cross is available to us,
and it's our covenant duty to pursue these promises
and live in them the best we can.
So, here you should have a number one that says,
we are a faith church.
Absolutely we are a faith church.
Second Corinthians 5.7 says, we walk by faith,
not by sight.
Romans 4.16 says, faith is the guarantee of the promises.
Hebrews 11.6 says, without faith,
it's impossible to even please God.
Luke 18.8 Jesus said, when I return,
will I even find faith on the earth?
Hebrews 12 talks about the faith that boils in us
and it perfecting and working in us
and how we understand that everything that God does,
we understand it by faith.
And even how he created the earth,
we understand that by faith.
Let me give you one scripture.
Can you jump off of this, Vanessa,
and go to Romans 10, verse number 9 and 10?
So, go back to the how to.
Well, you need to believe God
because this is what his promises are
and that's all good, but how do I do it?
How do I believe God?
See, that flows through everything.
What does it mean to believe God?
How do I talk if I'm believing God?
What do I think if I'm believing God?
Explain faith to me.
Explain what it means to believe God.
Someone put a challenge out for you.
Jesus said it this way.
Your work is to believe.
True faith and belief is work.
If we can't explain why that's work,
we're probably not believing.
It's like taking your car to a mechanic
and there's a knocking in the engine.
And he lifts the hood and he looks at it and says,
oh, yeah, we can fix that.
Well, what do you think it is?
I have no idea what it is.
Well, where are you going to start?
How much is this going to cost me?
I don't know where to start.
I don't know. I'll go on YouTube
and I'll look something up.
Maybe we can figure it out.
We'll take care of it for you.
Don't worry about it.
Close the hood and go someplace else.
Hope it runs till you get there.
You say, why?
He doesn't know how to do what he claims he can do.
Can you explain faith to me?
How it works?
How it changes the way we're supposed to think?
The way we're supposed to act?
The way we're supposed to talk?
How we're supposed to focus ourself?
Why does faith become work?
If you can't explain it,
you probably aren't doing it.
A good mechanic can explain
what he has to do to fix the car.
Someone who has no idea
probably can't fix the car.
Follow the line of thinking there.
Romans 10, verse 9.
It's not up yet.
I thought it was there already.
There it is.
Because if you acknowledge and confess with your lips
that Jesus is Lord and in your heart believe
adhere to trust and rely on the truth
that God has raised him from the dead,
you will be saved.
You're in the Amplified.
Could you go to New King James?
And then go to verse number 10.
These are our basic salvation scriptures.
For with the heart we believe to righteousness
with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.
So Paul is saying to get saved,
you've got to have two things.
You've got to have belief
and you've got to speak it out of your mouth.
Confession is part of faith.
Well, you're not one of these
name it and claim it people.
Absolutely I am.
So are you if you're saved?
If I ask you, are you saved?
Yeah, I'm saved.
You just named it and claimed it.
Well, do you think Jesus rose from the dead?
Yes, I believe Jesus.
You're claiming it.
You're claiming you believe that.
You just named it and you claimed it.
You have to have confession to have faith.
You can't pray for God to intervene
in your marriage and then walk away
and say, I doubt this will ever change.
You are not in faith.
You're in unbelief.
Just saying, that's one of the components.
So now I want you to notice something.
Jump back to verse 8.
But what does it say?
It says the word is near you in your heart
or in your mouth and in your heart.
This is the word of faith which we preach.
People ask, are you word of faith?
Absolutely, I'm word of faith.
Paul was word of faith.
Now I'm not word of faith of the organization.
You know, there's an earthly organization
called word of faith.
I'm a word of faith.
What does that mean?
It says faith is in my mouth
and if it doesn't come out through my words
it's going to be useless.
God spoke in Genesis 1 and things appeared.
That's faith.
He was using faith.
So the whole concept of, well, yeah,
go back to the last verse.
Getting too excited.
The whole concept is, are we faith?
Well, there's only one other option.
Unbelief.
Well, I'm not talking about that.
I'm talking about extreme faith.
If you understood what faith meant
there is no such thing as extreme faith.
There's strong faith.
There's powerful faith.
There's faith that works.
There's weak faith.
There's unbelief.
There's, you know,
the disciples came to Jesus and said,
why couldn't we cast the demon out?
What did he say?
It was because of your lack of faith.
So do I want strong faith?
Absolutely.
I want what Paul is preaching about there.
I want it to be strong.
And then letter E, you need to write that in in the book.
You can go back to the book now.
Letter E, you need to write in the thing that kind of flows
through our whole sub-purpose.
This is how we do it.
We come from the perspective of how to,
how do you praise and worship?
We are going to explain that and describe that
and demonstrate that and participate with that
the best we know how.
How do you prophesy?
We will explain that, describe that,
participate with it and try to help you do it
the best we know how.
We want you to not just hear what's available
and believe it, but to live in what's available
and do it.
And the thing there is that's the how to emphasis.
So now we are going to take this
and turn it a whole different direction
because this is what I felt he wanted me to do at the end.
Could you bring up 2nd Corinthians 1 verse 3?
I think verse 3 and 4 would be fine.
New King James is great.
When it comes to why we are here,
there is a lot of people who feel like
they have messed up why they are here.
So God can never use them
for what he created them to do.
They have done things wrong.
They have made mistakes.
They have messed things up.
So the main purpose,
advanced the kingdom of God,
the sub purpose of how God wants to do it through them,
he can't do it through them anymore
because they are broken.
Made some bad choices.
Made some mistakes.
They are broken.
They can't do it.
Okay, I got a break right there.
And I got to go do something else.
You have been being criticized
for the way you worship.
Do not give into that.
You worship God with all your heart.
And you engage with him.
Don't listen to what people have to say.
Anybody can stand at a distance
and throw stones.
You just let him bounce.
And you worship God with all your heart.
Because you were questioning,
should I keep doing this this way?
Should I not?
Maybe I'm out of line.
You are not out of line.
You just worship God the way you feel
you're supposed to worship God.
And what's going on with you
as you're being thrashed?
You are not under attack,
demonically.
He's growing you.
So don't confuse those two.
Because it can feel like,
why does my life not come around?
Oh, he's rebuilding it.
So just understand.
He's rebuilding, he's reshaping,
he's reforming you.
Let that happen.
Because again, there's been some confusion there.
Right? And I'm taking authority over this
and I'm trying to stand against the devil.
This is not the devil.
This is God changing you from the inside out.
So that's just a word of encouragement.
I'm going to talk flowery.
You are not too broken.
You are not
too broken, too damaged.
God has huge things
for you.
Absolutely huge things.
So now take that thought
and listen to what I'm going to say here.
Bring Seton Corinthians back up.
God takes
our mistakes,
our brokenness,
our failures,
our junk,
and he weaves them right into
what he wants to use us for.
They don't disqualify us.
They actually qualify us
to do more.
God does not know defeat.
He doesn't sit on his throne and go,
oh great, there they went and did it.
Well now they're useless.
Now we got to find someone else.
You know what he does, he says,
oh well they went and did it.
So we got some work to do on them.
But now they're going to understand
an aspect of this rotten, stinking world
that they never understood before.
And I'm going to use them
according to what just happened.
Bless be the God and Father
of our Lord Jesus Christ.
How is it anointing on this?
The Father of mercy is the God of all comfort.
Next verse.
Who comforts us in all our tribulation
that we may be able to comfort those
who are in any way in trouble.
With the comfort
which we ourselves
were comforted by.
Well when do you need comfort from God?
When you went and messed it up.
Next verse.
For as the sufferings of Christ
abound in us, so our consolation
abounds through Christ.
So Paul is talking about himself.
Next verse.
For if we are afflicted
it is for your consolation
and salvation.
Which is effective
for enduring the same sufferings
which we've suffered.
Or if we are comforted
it's for your consolation
and salvation. Go to the next verse.
And our hope for you is
steadfast because we know
that you are partakers of sufferings
as also you will partake
of the consolation.
So we've got sufferings.
God's going to comfort us.
Why?
So we do not want you to be ignorant
brethren of how this all works.
Our trouble which came to us in Asia
we were burdened beyond measure
and he goes on and talks about
the way we receive comfort
we are now able to give
comfort.
He doesn't disqualify us
if we've been a drug addict.
He will get us free from it
and then use that
weave it right into why we're alive
so that you can now go to someone else
who needs what you got.
This whole religious thing of
you got to be good enough for God.
It's such a pile of garbage.
We have to be sincere with God.
We have to give our lives
and let him be Lord and master.
But everything that we did
that was a pile of rubbish.
We messed it. We messed it up.
We sinned. We made a mistake.
Whatever. God takes that
and weaves it right into our life
and says now you're going to minister to people
you'd have never ministered to before
because you didn't understand them before.
Now you understand them.
It doesn't disqualify us
when we mess up.
If we will come back to God
and surrender be pliable.
Let him work in us.
It actually qualifies us
for more.
And some of us
I think even here maybe online
some of us even here
have struggled with this.
You might have been Christian for twenty thirty years
you might just be a new Christian.
And you struggled with this.
Well how can I do anything for God?
I did blah blah blah.
Well did you ask forgiveness?
Yes.
Are you growing so you get free of it?
Yeah.
Well then what God's going to do
is he's going to take whatever blah blah blah was
and he's going to use that
through you to now
touch people and help people
you would have never helped before.
It didn't disqualify you.
It actually qualified you.
Now yeah you've got to get free of it
you got to be an overcomer
you can't give to someone else
what you don't have.
I mean you got to be free of it
but once you're free of it
you can reach into people's lives
in a way that
if someone who never went through that
can't.
There's people sitting here
you can reach into people's lives
I can't.
I've never been an alcoholic.
Never been hooked on drugs.
I've never murdered anybody.
I've never beat my wife.
Wanted to some days.
That really messes with the Atmos right now.
But I never gave in to it.
Some of you know I could go on listing
something.
Some of you have done those kind of things
and you say I'm too big a sinner
I'm too wretched of a person for God
to be able to use in anything.
God don't see it that way.
He says in like the chorus
we got stuck on and that
I knew where it was going
and that's why we got stuck on it.
He's saying if you will let me
bring you back to the cross
and you will humble yourself
and let me start working in you
everything the...
you've read this someplace before
everything the enemy meant for evil
he will turn to good.
It's time some of us get this
false condemnation
false humility
this barrier that says
well you don't know what I've done
I really don't care.
Did you clean it up with God?
Well yeah I've cleaned it up with God
but I don't know if God
will ever use me.
He'll use you more if you get over yourself
and get over that bad belief
that says well only the qualified
can do this.
Everybody's qualified through the blood
of Jesus Christ
and the Holy Spirit's given to prepare us
to make us go there
so we can do.
So if that's you I just want to agree
with you in prayer.
You don't even have to come to the front.
If that's you just stand
let's all get an agreement
saying you know what's enough of this
laying back, holding back
I feel bad about myself
if I could go back 20, 30, 40 years
I would do this different
then maybe God would do something.
That's all a pile of lies.
All a pile of lies.
The only thing
that's stopping you
is you.
Because if you've gone to God
and said God forgive me
I'm so sorry
he don't remember
what you're talking about when you come back
the next week and say oh God forgive me
I'm so sorry I have no idea what you're talking about
I forgot your sin and I forgave it
and I cast it as far as these from the west
I have no clue what you're saying
we're our own worst enemy
so if you feel
okay grabbing the hand
of the person next to you
that's fine I just want you to agree with someone
if you want to.
Lord in the name of Jesus
we come into agreement
and I call that these lies
get broken off these people
enough of handicapping
and paralyzing
people who are
not only designed from the mother's womb
to accomplish something
and to meet a need and to do great
what scripture calls great exploits
do great things for you
not only handicapping
We are living and paralyzing them, but tormenting them all their life because I was such a bad person.
Stop it in the name of Jesus.
Stop it.
We are washed by the blood.
Scripture calls us justified. That means just as if we've never sinned.
Just as you are just as if you've never sinned.
And that's why Scripture says you are the righteousness of God in what Jesus did.
Lord, help us see who we are in this one little area.
I am not disqualified from anything God has for me.
You need to repeat that with me.
I am not disqualified from anything God has for me.
Devil? Say that. Devil? Now repeat after me.
If anything, God says, I'm more qualified.
Now folks, you need to keep that in your heart and in your mind and find Scripture.
Besides the one in 2 Corinthians 1, find Scripture that supports that.
And you need to speak to yourself.
Every time those feelings come of, oh, I wish I could, but 28 years ago I did this.
So now I'm disqualified. You need to speak to that and say, shut up.
If it's your own mind, if it's demonic input, whatever it is, shut up.
I am a new creation in Christ.
Old things have passed away. Behold, all things have become new.
I am not disqualified. I am more qualified by His grace and by what He did.
You get on that like fly on fly paper. You just stick to that and you beat that false belief into the ground
till it quits affecting you. You kill that thing. That is not of God.
Amen.