I want to talk about a concept this morning, then we're going to pray.
We're starting to praise a little bit earlier, because there's a lot to deal with this morning.
But I want to talk about the word represent.
And there's a reason attached to the service that's attached to our lifestyle.
The word represent or represent, you know, like, or the gangs say represent, you know, or whatever.
But it's that word that says we're going to repeat something.
But in order to repeat it, you have to repeat it exactly, right?
To represent it. You have to say it exactly what happened, right?
Our testimony should be us representing what God did, right?
So we represent by representing. Same word.
It just all depends on what you put the emphasis on when you say it.
And so God likes a lot of re's, right? Like we rejoice.
Like if you had joy, just go back and do that thing again, right? Rejoy it.
And so represent or represent is very much like that.
If you look through other words, I mean, he puts the re on a lot of stuff.
And I think that it's just go back and revisit what you already have.
Go back and don't forget where you came from and stir up that gift that's already in you, right?
So you're stirring up something. You're not constantly looking for something new.
And it is of our nature, our fleshly nature, to look for something new in a problem, right?
Now he may do something new that we've never experienced before,
but it's always based on what he's already done.
And that's what's crazy. We'll be like, I didn't see that coming.
But yet, if you look at it, he already did it.
He's the same yesterday, today, and forever.
It's just we are now first experiencing that new thing.
But so for him, for the Holy Spirit, what the Holy Spirit does is represents what Jesus did.
That's how he teaches us. That's how he counsels us.
That's how he's there for us.
He comes alongside and reminds us, okay, here's how he rolls.
I got to remind you, this is how God works. That's what the job of the Holy Spirit is.
And then he will represent how the kingdom of heaven is.
So when we get born again, you've heard me say this over and over, but I'll say it again anyway.
You're not accepting a ticket to heaven.
You're actually moving the kingdom of God inside of you.
And I always love the thought that just says how much love God has.
When you think about this flesh and how jacked up it is, God could have picked anywhere else to put his kingdom.
But he's like, no, that's exactly where I want to put it in that messed up container.
Because he's going to make it right. He's going to do it over.
He's going to try to, you know, he's going to, in us and through us,
going to bring it back to the original form and better. Amen.
So this is, this is part of what the Holy Spirit does.
And so then in us, we're to represent what the Holy Spirit showed us that he presented from heaven.
So the kingdom of God in us is the kingdom dwelling in us.
The kingdom of heaven is a place.
So the kingdom of heaven is to be pulled down to be represented in the kingdom of God and then through us.
It's a process. A lot of people don't understand that they think they came in the prayer line and joined a church
or got saved, meant to get a ticket so they don't have to go to hell.
And that is included in it, but the kingdom is now in you.
The kingdom is the sphere of his rule, his domain, his ways of doing things just now moved into you.
And so that's where we make him Lord and we get out of the way.
So it's simple gospel, but I don't know that it's preached all the time.
Because when I presented other churches, things like that, they look at me like that's the first time they ever heard it.
They just thought they were agreeing to something.
I agree and I accept Jesus.
And so you can accept him, but what does that mean?
But to move the kingdom into you and get out of the way and make him Lord is everything.
So now when the kingdom stirs, it's stirring inside of us.
The power of God has shut up in our bones.
I mean, it's he's training us, he's teaching us, but he's only going to represent heaven in this, right?
What we have in the flesh is trained by the flesh is trained by the earth.
So now we have these two ways of thinking that collide.
Amen?
Simple truth, two ways of thinking that collide.
And so religion, what religion has done is I don't know if we should represent like heaven.
I've heard some stuff, seen some stuff, there was a miracle over there, but it's going to make it messy for the people, right?
So we'll mix it so that we're presenting it, but we're not giving them the full meal deal.
We're not going to really say what heaven is like.
Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come.
Thy will be done on earth as it already is in heaven.
So we invite that, but then we hold it back because we don't want to be labeled weird, right?
That's what religion does. That's why it cuts off.
This religion believes up to here, then those add this other thing, and then yeah.
And then there's the crazies, that just the whole Bible.
You know, we would be those people.
And so we want to represent.
So there's something that happens, like what we're going to talk about in service this morning, can make some people uncomfortable.
Because if you've been touched by religion, which we all have, because it's the earthy realm that has trained our flesh,
we have to tap into the kingdom of God inside of us and let him represent or present to us for the first time what heaven's like
and ignore how this earthly realm works.
It's hard because that's where persecution comes in.
That's where people talk and smack come in, you know, and that's where even you'll talk smack yourself like,
ah, this makes me uncomfortable.
I don't, you know, this whole baptism, the Holy Spirit thing or whatever.
I don't want people to think I'm weird.
That's flesh.
We are not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
It is the power of God unto salvation.
Salvation means to take the limits off.
You don't operate in the power of God and acknowledge it.
Limits aren't coming off.
I don't care if you did the little prayer at summer camp in 72.
And that's how I know I'm saved.
I did that little prayer, right?
Well, it's the kingdom that moves.
His domain moves in us, shifts things in us, changes things in us,
and brings us into a way of thinking.
But the only thinking that he's bringing us to is the way heaven thinks.
It's always so opposite of how it operates here.
This was ruled by darkness.
And the only way that we can come into the light is get into the heavenly realm
and its way of thinking.
I think it's Ephesians that says Jesus is the enlightenment of man.
Like, he lights it up.
We sing that song, you can light it up.
I mean, it's because if we're in darkness, we think like the world.
It doesn't matter if you're saved or not.
You can still be thinking dark thoughts.
You can still be thinking the way of the world.
There's no light in it.
And all you have to do is shift and come over here to where the light is.
Also, you see stuff you never saw before, but nobody else is seeing it
and makes you feel crazy.
Amen?
I remember being so jazzed in 1981 when I gave my heart to Christ.
We had fight and going on in the home, all kinds of stuff.
It was just chaos.
There was a fire in our home.
My brother, Mike, was almost killed in a car accident.
You know, it's almost like the devil knew, oh, it's coming.
They're about to get into the light.
And so it was just one chaotic thing after the next.
And I remember giving my heart to God and then going back to the church
and they presented the Holy Spirit, which is something heavenly.
I didn't hear about this and I went to church.
I graduated catechism.
I got the little thing and the free Bible.
So I could prove that I graduated, but I knew nothing about the kingdom of heaven
and how it operated or what the plan is here on the earth when it came to the Holy Spirit.
So they presented getting baptized in the Spirit and had us just sit in a circle.
And I remember they said take hands, right?
It was like fire.
Now this doesn't happen all the time for everybody, but in this situation,
this was a move of God that it was like, bam, when we grabbed hands,
I was like, what is happening?
It was fire.
And that went around that circle.
We got all of us instantly baptized in the Holy Ghost.
And we prayed and we prayed in tongues.
And we prayed some more in tongues and we prayed.
This went on for a long time.
I remember my brother and I going home because we had to get up milked cows the next day,
but I mean it still was like midnight or something crazy.
And we got out of the vehicle and my brother just started singing in tongues.
We had never heard that. Nobody represented that at the church even.
And he was singing in tongues and it was so loud, my dad got up and he was furious.
What?
My blank is going on and on or whatever.
But the joy of the Lord had come on both of us.
We were so filled, so like almost drunk in the spirit,
that you laid in bed and you were like...
And there's nobody there.
You're like, your whole body felt the fire.
That's awesome, right?
Tell that to just anybody and they're like, you're cray-cray.
I don't know what kind of cult you were a part of.
But once you know, you can't not know.
It changed me.
I have not been the same.
And so that's part of it.
And someone told me, well, a cult will change you too.
Yeah, you have to yield to that.
You have to be dominated by that.
You have to get into that.
That's a different thing.
That'll bring bondage but not freedom.
Freedom changes in that way.
And there's a big difference between cultic activity
and coming into something where you feel like you can gain power
and after a while you realize everyone's controlling you.
That's a cult.
So I'm saying this because
just what we're going to be talking about in service
but also in your life when you go to witness to people
you follow the spirit, what you say.
I don't start out telling people that story.
That was the least actually of what has happened with me in my life
and experiences with God and it was intense.
I don't start out witnessing with that story.
You share with wisdom but I'm not ashamed of it.
I'm not ashamed of what he did.
I won't deny what he did.
I'm not going to get religious about it, what he did.
I'm not going to say, well, that was for that time.
That was for a special reason or any of that type of stuff.
And so the flesh wants to do that
because the flesh likes to protect itself.
Flesh does not like persecution.
All we were doing last night, right, Paul?
I just was talking about when the presence of God is in a place
sometimes demons manifest.
Bam! Right at that moment somebody spoke up nice and loud
and it was a manifestation of a demon.
Right? Now some people will think that's so weird.
That's God moving. That's God moving.
And I'm saying all this because what we represent this morning
we're going to be representing what was presented to us
by the Holy Spirit.
And, you know, we've got so many videos because
and we're not playing them all this morning.
I mean, we got just a lot of footage and the reason is
the Lord said to make a way to record everything.
That's when they had those little flip cameras,
those little, Felicia and I had one
and we were like on everything, you know.
And thank God, thank God she did a lot of the filming
and editing and stuff like that
and they didn't have the stuff we have now.
And because of that, we're able to go back
and see what actually happened because, you know,
sometimes you remember something a certain way
and then if you played the video, you're like,
oh, I thought it was like this, right?
So it's good to get things down
so you can represent them the correct way.
You're not adding anything to it
and you're not subtracting anything away.
I'm saying this because we all need an encounter with God.
And when you have an encounter with God,
one of the purposes for it is that you've experienced him
so that you can go represent that to somebody else, right?
Now if your only experience with God
is that you were taught so now you teach
and then you're taught and now you teach
and then you'll get something done.
It'll be a piece of something, right?
It's not that nothing happens
through someone who's taught and taught
and everybody's listening and,
okay, all right, I got you, right?
The thing that comes out of that, though,
is when you're just taught and taught and taught,
nobody does.
Nobody goes out and is the doer
because the expectation is just to be taught.
That's what a lot of churches have done and are doing.
It's safe. We just stay in that zone of the teaching, right?
And so then you don't see a lot of other things
operating through people in the church
because unless your teacher and your mind
works like a teacher and your gifting is a teacher,
what's there for you to do?
Right?
But when the Spirit of God comes
and he lights up all the gifts
and the five-fold are operating,
see, one of the priorities coming into
open heavens is to make sure
there's a balance of five-fold in the house.
We got some prophets coming,
but there needs to be a representation
of the five-fold operating.
When you go after, you know,
making a specific where going after,
we want to see heaven come down.
Well, you also need to have the five-fold in the house
to keep order, to keep things moving,
to see it from a prophet's angle,
to see it from an evangelist's angle.
You see what I'm saying?
So many times religions water down things,
not really representing the kingdom, right?
So we'll have a gift, a gift that'll be operating.
So I'm dealing with a couple things this morning
because I know someone's watching online
that had the question of, you know,
I love our pastor, but it's the same message
just from different angles all the time.
So I said, tell me what the message is.
God has a plan for your life, right?
Good message.
He has a plan for you
and you need to get born again.
I said, that's not a pastor, that's an evangelist.
And you have an evangelist in the pastor's spot.
Now, you can be a pastoral evangelist,
but then you better bring in other five-fold people
to balance out the church, right?
And so if pastor and I didn't work apostolically here,
the establishing of the church will get funky.
The evangelist would say, it needs to go this way
and this one would say it needs to go.
You have to have an apostle.
You have to have apostles operating to oversee the whole thing,
making sure all the giftings have place
and they're all speaking into it for balance.
So that's part of what God's been doing in this body.
And you know that poise is us for something bigger?
That's brought us to a point where it's like,
oh man, we thought some stuff happened before,
something bigger is going to happen
because all the gifts are operating in the house.
See what I'm saying?
And so we are privileged to have the speakers coming in
that are going to be here this year.
We don't know how this whole thing is going to go,
but we need to be praying on it
and not trying to force it to go one way or the other.
You know, because sometimes you had an experience
and you want to go back and have that experience again.
Well God, he might want to do something totally over here
and we were like, but I like that thing we did last time.
We're not doing that, right?
And nor are we coming in and doing the thing
where we're waiting on the speakers to direct everything.
No, we're already coming in prayed up.
We are already in the spot like
whether speakers show up or not, the heavens are open.
Like, well, they couldn't make it.
I guess we're having church.
You know what I'm saying?
It's not based on the speakers,
although their gifting is going to light up certain areas
where we're going to see things
and it'll be like a puzzle piece that's been missing.
I want you to have the right expectation
when we're going into this.
So now to go back and look at what happened,
that's what we're going to be doing here.
What we're going to be doing this morning
when we look at what happened
is just a part of revival that happened in the modular.
We've had revival stuff in Colorado.
I got saved in revival.
We've had revival stuff happen in home groups
and things like that.
It's not like this was the thing, right?
But this is what we have footage of, all right?
And what God decides to do some,
He does it in an outpouring way
when He does it as a group.
And then there's other times that He'll do...
I mean, revival can be two people
who get saved here this morning.
For them, they were being revived, right?
Is that what I'm saying?
We have to have clear thinking about this.
So now when things are represented,
it stirs up what happened before.
It stirs up hope.
It stirs up just the same way.
Stir up the gift that's already in you.
You're not using it right now.
You're not in it right now.
You're conflicted or whatever.
And God said, stir up what's already in you.
Get that thing going again.
Because what's already there
is enough to take care of whatever you need.
Because we tend to, in the flesh,
forget so quickly.
That's why you can have conference junkies
where they went and they had something.
And then it was like,
okay, that worked for a couple of days.
I need to go to another place.
And that'll work for a couple of days.
I had an encounter with God in 1981,
and it carried me for a long time.
So here's the other thing that we need to understand.
Encounters are meant for outpouring moments
so that you can walk through a situation
and get up and do the thing you encountered him for.
It's not a feel-good moment, right?
We'll talk about that this morning also.
But I wanted to put it in the prayer time
because we got prayer and intercession coming up
for the open heaven meetings.
Yeah, yeah, right?
But you go, okay, let's pray.
And people go,
what were we gonna say, right?
So you pray in the spirit.
If you know not what to pray,
then you pray in the spirit
till he gives you what to pray.
But you should have an expectation
of what we're looking for.
We're looking for an outpouring of the spirit.
We're looking for the heavenlies to come down.
And we go, aha, I've seen that before.
And for a lot of people,
I've never seen that till now, right?
We're looking for that to happen.
And in that, a big portion of what happened,
like when I got saved in 1981,
there were 25 preachers
that came out of that revival within three months.
25, we counted them.
They're either on the mission field.
One is in Germany right now,
just rocking it for Reema.
You know, we didn't even know what Reema was,
but somehow he got into that.
I mean, it came out of a small little church.
But the point of it,
the point of the revival
was to get people changed up,
see the kingdom of heaven,
get that operating through the kingdom of God in them,
and let him rule that thing
and then go do what he asked you to do.
And we'll talk about that this morning also.
So then how do you pray on that?
If you pray a selfish prayer,
it's going to be for an experience.
I just want to experience it.
We don't know what's going to happen.
It'll be so cool.
We'll come and we'll have an experience.
Experience doesn't really mean anything
unless there's a do thing at the end of it.
Yeah.
I'm not all for, you know,
being in the prayer line every...
I mean, you might have to do that for a bit
to get healed of something or whatever.
But somewhere there needs to be a change
that that is not your Christian life.
Where, you know, everywhere I go,
I got a prophecy, everywhere I go.
When does the inside of us grow
to the point that we hear from God?
Uh-huh.
So that's what we're looking for
in our prayer for our hearts to change.
The church itself has matured.
We know that because five full gifts are operating.
Ha-ha, it's so good.
It's so good.
If you keep a body of believers
in a spot where it's built on whatever gift
is on the stage,
and that person keeps you in that spot too,
that, you know, you just stay...
you just stay operating.
You always come to me and my gift.
Come to me and my gift.
That's an immature church.
That's not how God set it up.
That's not how the heavenlies want it done.
He wants to light up everybody.
No soldier left behind.
He wants to light up everybody.
Yeah.
So sometimes as prayer people,
as you're sitting here,
I've had this happen in services that...
and I'm sitting up here.
I don't actually like where we sit
because I like to see the people.
I mean, if it would be me,
I'd be like on the corner just staring at y'all.
Right?
Because I want to see God tells me something
for a certain person or whatever.
So it's kind of a head crank if I got to do that.
So, but it's one of those things where
you see a new person come in,
you know, as you're seeking,
have you ever stopped
and start praying for that person?
Like you see me like,
oh God, get that person.
Don't let them leave this service
without experiencing you.
See, I can do that
because I've already experienced him
and I'm not showing up
for me to experience him again.
I will.
I get the benefits of it.
Do you see what I'm saying?
But if our heart is looking for
who else can experience him,
I want that person set free.
I don't even know that person,
but you can see the burden they're carrying.
It's like, don't let them leave this service,
Lord God.
You know, do that thing.
I remember when Calvin Woods was here
and one night I was like,
Lord, don't pass that person by.
That person sitting right there.
They need a word from you.
Don't pass that person by.
I don't need anything from you.
You go after that person.
And then all of a sudden he just turned
and he was like, I have a word for you.
And spoke of that person,
they got delivered and got set free
and it was like, yes.
That's also a change in the heart
from coming from looking at things
from like we're here to observe,
to see if something supernatural happens.
There comes a maturity that will happen
where it's like it's not about me anymore.
It's about the overall picture.
It's about everybody who has a need.
We want to make sure their need is being met.
You can be an usher and miss that point.
Or you can gain that point
and be the best usher ever
because you're like looking like,
oh, we don't want to miss this person.
Oh, that one's been waiting for a while.
This one needs to sit down
because, you know, their legs are weak
and they're waiting.
I mean, you're just all over it
like white on rice.
Amen?
So, when the kingdom is represented,
we go back and we visit.
What has God actually done?
You testify to yourself
of what he's already done in your life
and you stir that up.
Amen?
So that's what we're going to do
in service this morning.
We're going to stir it up.
It doesn't matter if you were there or not.
We're going to talk about it.
And we want you to have your questions ready
because we can do a question and answer afterwards.
Or you can text us
and then we can deal with it in the weeks to come.
But we don't want anybody going,
huh, I wonder.
Let's get the stuff answered, okay?
So let's stand.
Father, I thank you.
One of the things that is a gift
to me that God uses in the ministry
is a crazy thing.
I don't remember people's names.
It's so horrible.
I don't remember their names.
I could tell you their testimony.
I could tell you what God said to them.
I can tell you what they had on.
But I don't remember their name
and it's that guy, right?
And so there's something about
the remembrance part.
Same thing with communion.
It's often as you do this in remembrance.
You go back and you visit.
There is something about visiting the things of God
that bring it up prophetically.
And what it does is it says,
here's where we came from.
And God goes, and here's where you're going.
Right?
But if we don't remember what he's already done,
we're kind of like flounder in this.
I just don't know where I'm going.
I don't know where.
We'll bring up what he's already done.
And he'll connect into that
and tell you where you're going.
So Father, we come before you
in the mighty name of Jesus.
And we thank you.
We thank you that you represented the kingdom
to us through the Savior,
through your Word.
And you did it, Lord God,
by the Holy Spirit.
Each and every one of us has a story
of when we encountered you.
Hallelujah.
And we thank you, Lord God,
that you're going to stir up that remembrance
of where we came from
and bring us into the now.
And then you're going to connect.
And even in this morning service,
hey, this is where we're going.
Hey, this is where you're going personally
in your own life.
It'll be between you and God.
This is where we're going.
Let the revelation come.