Scripture reference: John 20:29 (AMPC)
Thank You, Lord, that we can enjoy skillful musicians. Your anointing rests upon skillful people. We receive Your anointing to praise You and worship You and honor You, we give glory to Your Name. Hallelujah, hallelujah.
I believe Father, that as Your anointed skillful musicians in the Old Testament, as they played the glory of God would come into a place. People would be set free, healings would take place, depressive spirits would leave, just because skillful musicians came with an anointing that rested upon them to bring glory to God. Thank You Jesus. Thank You Jesus, thank You, Jesus. Praise You, Lord.
I pray Father that we have hearts to hear, hearts to receive, ears to hear. Minds will be ready to receive the Word of God that You have for us this morning. That it is anointed, to bring about the change that You require and want for us, in Jesus’ Name. Amen, amen. You may be seated.
Did you like that? That was good hey? So, before they leave the stage, I’m going to ask Nic to let me play his guitar. See, he just stops all the buttons when I come here, it’s like I’m handing over this grand thing to him, you know watch out. [Laughter] Is this the same guitar? Ok.
So, Nic put your hand on my shoulder here and just, you say “John take all of my skill, of my guitar playing, take it for yourself.”
Nic:
Pastor John, take all of my skill, of my guitar playing, take it for yourself.
Pastor John:
Thank you I receive it. Okay, now I’m going to play. I got a D chord; I got a G chord. Hey? That’s all right hey? [Pastor John speaking to Nic] And I can even gooi a few things like [playing strings on the guitar]. I can’t hold it properly but, thank you, Nic. I am now a fully anointed Nic. Thank you.
I did that on purpose because I’m going to speak to you about your will becomes your platform and your worship becomes the power, you can live your life with excellence and with heavenly glory. I’m going to read to you, John chapter 20 verse 29, 29Jesus said to him, Because you have seen Me, Thomas, do you now believe (trust, have faith)? Blessed and happy and to be envied are those who have never seen Me and yet have believed and adhered to and trusted and relied on Me. (John 20:29 AMPC)
Thomas, he walked around with Jesus for three years and then He died and then people started to tell him that He has been raised from the dead and he didn’t believe them. When he did see Him, then Jesus said, “Well, Thomas it’s very good that you believed Me when you actually saw Me, but how blessed are those in future generations who will believe Me and never see Me?” It’s quite something, that’s you and me. We haven’t seen Him with our eyes, but we believe Him in our spirit.
Okay, let’s just talk about Nic for a moment. Nic laid his hands on me and said, “All of the skill that I have, make it yours, John.” What made Nic, such a good guitar player? Well, he had a desire, he had a passion, he had some kind of ear, that he could hear music. I don’t know the full story of how he got into it, but most musicians find themselves interested in an instrument and they start playing it, either they get lessons or they teach themselves. If they wanted to get better, they got to eventually either have a mentor or get lessons from somewhere or something and eventually they become a much better player. Eventually there comes a transition point, where they play so well that they either do it professionally or they just do it as a very good hobby. Right?
So, when Nic laid his hands on me, I came up here and I said, “Eish, I even played a few chords. I’m professional, I’m a muso. I got the spirit of Nic on me.” No, just because I got the spirit of Nic on me, it doesn’t make me, Nic. Right? There’s some things that’s got to happen before I become Nic. So, if I am going to be like Nic, he is going to say, “Ok, John, now you’ve got the rock music, excellent guitarist anointing on you, but there are some things you got to do. Let me show you. You got to learn to get your fingers loose. So, let’s play da-da-da-da-da da-da-da-da-da. Okay, one more thread da-da-da-da-da. I will teach you the C scales and I will teach you the A scales and we’ll teach you the D scales, da-da-da-da-da up and down the chord.”
“It’s ten minutes Nic, and my fingers are so sore, I can’t hardly stand it, and then my hands are so sore.” “Okay, we’ll take a break.” “I want to play the music.” “Let’s go da-da-da-da-da da-da-da-da-da.” How many years of da-da-da-da-da takes for Nic to be able to play the way he plays?
Even still now, if you go and see professional musicians, when they warm up before they play in a concert or before they do a performance. They will take their guitar and they will play scales and they will play things and they will make sure that their strings are in tune and there’s a whole thing that they got to do because what sound they want to deliver, requires for them to do certain things, to make sure that their fingers are ready, that if they drop a plectrum when it plays that they can get another one without anybody seeing it. There are many things that happen when a professional guitarist is playing. Right?
So, I’ve got all of Nic’s skill on me, but I’m not very near where Nic is. You agree? Even though I can play a few chords and I can make a few sounds that it sounds like I know what I’m doing. I’m not anywhere near where Nic is. You agree? That’s what happens when you become a born-again Christian. When you receive Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour into your life, you have everything that Jesus is, with the Father in the universe. That Jesus that sits at the right hand of the Father, that God has made everything subject to His Name and has put all enemies under His feet. That same Jesus is in you. No difference between the Jesus that sits in the heavenly places, than the Jesus that’s in you. That same Jesus.
How? By the Holy Spirit. Same God, the Father and the Holy Spirit and Jesus and the Holy Spirit that is in the universe lives in you, when Jesus becomes Lord and Saviour of your life. How does it happen? It happens through the power of faith that when you choose Him, He gives you the faith for them to come and live in your heart, your spirit. You now become fully Jesus. That’s quite powerful. So that means, I’m fully Nic as I’m walking around here, but I can’t even do a thing with the guitar.
Same with Jesus. You’re fully Jesus, but you can’t do anything that Jesus said you could do. Huh? That’s quite something. So, what do I’ve got to do, to get to know Jesus or to be like Jesus? Well, you got to do the Jesus, da-da-da-da-da, da-da-da-da-da. What does that look like? Well, you got to come to church, you got to go to a place where people will teach you. Huh? Someone to teach you. Right? That’s what you got to do. You got to go to someone that’s going to teach you, and then if they teach you to do things, then what they teach you to do is what you must do. You can’t have people teach you to do things and then you don’t do what they say. Because now you’ve heard what they said and you’ve got the knowledge.
Now, like if it was Nic teaching me and he says, “Now let’s do these things da-da-da-da-da, da-da-da-da-da. Now go home this week and just practise these chords, get your fingers…” “But my fingers are sore.” “They’re going to get sorer, John.” “I don’t like to hear that.” “They’re going to get sorer.” I don’t know if that’s the right word, but anyway.
You know, they’re going to get much more sensitive and every time you play the strings, it’s just going to be sore. Until you play through the numbness and then it’s going to get sore again and so you’re going to get sore and sore until it’s going to get hard and then the skin will start peeling off and then you’ll get hard and hard and then eventually you probably won’t have anything, but hard skin there. Am I right, Nic?
Because you’ve got to go [Pastor John imitates doing guitar scales:] da-da-da-da-da, da-da-da-da-da. You can’t get to play the way Nic plays, unless you’ve gone through the process of your fingers hurting, getting numb, really hard skin and the skin coming off. So, that eventually it doesn’t matter how long you play, you’re numb to it. Huh?
So, he gives me exercises. I could go away; I’m busy doing this and I’ve got phone calls and I’ve got this and I’ve got meetings and I’ve got prayer meetings and I’ve got to make money and I’ve got a job to go to and I come home and jis, I’m tired tonight. Guitar lê maar daarso. Nothing with the guitar. Get up the next morning, go, tsh-tsh-tsh, everything, come back – nothing. Next week I go and see Nic and he says to me, “Hey, Pastor John, what’s happened? Did you practice?” “No, Nic,” story, story, story, story, story. He says, “Okay. We’ve got to start again.” “No, no. I know that stuff you already taught me. I know it already. Let’s move on to the next thing.” “Sorry, John. Can’t do that. You don’t get this, you don’t get the next thing.”
If you’re not practising that, the very basics of what you have to be; to know how to be Jesus, know how to play guitar – you’re not doing the basics. Ja, but when I go to church on a Sunday, you keep giving me more information. Ja, but I keep coming back to the basics too. That’s what I said about the professional musicians, I mean, even if a professional musician, if he doesn’t play guitar for two or three weeks, his fingers start getting soft, his hands get lumpy and he’s not in it. Then he has to almost start again, I mean, he starts at a high level, but he’s got to start again because, in order for him to produce the sound that he needs to produce, he’s got to train his fingers, train his body, train his ears, train his whole everything to get to that level that needs to put out the sound.
So, when I come to him and I say to him, “Nic, let’s go to the next level.” He says, “No, Pastor John, let’s go da-da-da-da-da da-da-da-da. And by the way, Pastor John, I’m not moving from here until you get this right.” “But, Nic, there’s so much more about the guitar I’ve got to learn.” “I know. So, learn this first.” Hmm…
See, what happens with us, as Christians, is that Jesus gives us things to do as Christians and then we say, “No, no. I’ll just pray a prayer; Jesus bless me, help me, change my life and when I just pray that prayer, it’s enough.” No. There’s a whole lot of things that you’ve got to learn, things that you’ve got to be engaged in with Jesus: da-da-da-da-da. So that your spirit man and your life that you need, starts to become an automatic response. That’s what Nic would be teaching me; when I do these things, do these things, then play these three chords: D, C, G, D, C, G. Then he might go: A, E, F, whatever. B7, I don’t know, whatever structure. Play these groups of things together. Play them, play them, play them over and over again, play them.
“Ah, I don’t want to do that. That’s like…” Okay, so here’s a song, simple chords. Just play the song. Okay, now you’ve got the chords, now we’ve got to make sure that you get the tempo and the rhythm right. Do you understand the progression of what’s happening in music here? I’m talking, just basics.
That’s what happens with Jesus; when you get born again and you get saved, Jesus lives in your heart and you are fully Jesus in your heart and you have everything that Jesus is, you have living inside of your spirit man and your spirit man is calling out to be the reflection of the glory of God, in all of your life. He says, “There’s a few things you’ve got to do. One of them is you’ve got to go to church as often as you can. There’s a few other things you’ve got to do; you’ve got to speak the Word every day.” There’s a few other things you’ve got to do and there’s some things He wants you to do.
Do you think Jesus needs you to give Him praise? He doesn’t need your praise. So, why does He suggest that you praise Him every day? The praise is for you, because when you praise Him, He fills you with His life while you’re praising. You think Nic really cares whether I go, do-do-do-do-do every day? He’s already done it. He knows what it takes to get there. So, whether I do it or not, doesn’t affect his career. Right? So, why is he telling me to do it? Because it’s for my good, it’s for my growth. So, God doesn’t need us to praise Him for His growth. Like all of us, if we don’t praise Him; ahh, praise You… Somehow, He gets diminished from the lack of praise, somehow He gets greater and more anointed when we praise Him more. Hey. He’s got created beings flying around and He’s got spirits that have gone past and they live in Heaven now and they all worship Him night and day and they can’t stop it because He is so glorious, He doesn’t need us. Come on.
The praises that He’s saying that you should do, is for us because it’s part of how we grow to become like Christ. When you wake up in the morning and you say, “I’m a son of God and I praise Him and I thank Him and I glorify Him and He’s the awesome God that I serve. The great I Am lives in me and I bless Him,” from that moment onwards, you just become a different person.
You know, sometimes people have different ways they live together. I’ve been married to my beautiful wife, who’s in Joburg church today, a long, long time. We have learned and continue to live with each other in ways that are wonderful. We know how to flow with each other, with emotional intimacy, with spiritual intimacy, with physical intimacy, with many things that are togetherness in life. We have learned to flow like that with each other. But we didn’t get there from the beginning. We heard what the Bible said and we learned from somebody that said, “In your marriage, you’ve got to go, da-da-da-da-da, da-da-da-da-da, da-da-da-da-da-da-da.” “No, I don’t want to put that hard work into the marriage. I want to be groovy, man. I want romance and I want this and I want to have, you know, just this grand, emotional, beautiful experience.”
I’ve got news for you. Something’s going to happen, that’s going to come and rock your boat because if you don’t do, do-do-do-do-do-do, something’s going to come and rock your boat. So, for me, the way that looked like is, I got a Word from the Lord, that said I must love my wife like Christ loves the Church, I must give myself up for her. For her, the way it looked like is that she must honour me and respect me and admire me. We found words that every day we could speak these words to each other.
You know, sometimes people get up in the morning and they’re very grumpy when they get up in the morning and they have this thing with their partner in life and they say, “Don’t even talk to me for half an hour, like [Pastor John growls]… I’m a bad waker-upper.” Well, listen. That’s your choice. You have chosen to be a bad waker-upper. You have chosen that. You can change that for the sake of your partner. How does that happen? Well, da-da-da-da-da-da. When you wake up in the morning and you want to go [Pastor John growls] you say, “Thank You, Jesus, for a great day. Bless this day today. You are the Lord and Saviour of my day and I glorify You. You are wonderful today.” Then you turn to your partner and you say, “I love you, I bless you, I think your day is going to be amazing. Glory to God!” As you turn around you fight with your [Pastor John growls].
It doesn’t matter that, internally, you are still fighting with the growl, as long as on the outside you’re doing the da-da-da-da-da. That’s what you’re doing. On the outside you’re putting life into the relationship, you’re playing those scales, so that one day when you wake up and you’re doing scales and scales and chord progressions and you’ve been doing all these kinds of things, one day you wake up in the morning and it’s no longer a practice, it’s; now you pick up your voice guitar and you play music in your marriage. Then all the things that you’ve always wanted are right there and it begins to flow like an orchestra in your life. Dis ‘n goeie preek, neh? Hallelujah. Praise Jesus. Praise Jesus.
I wanted to, finally, just share this with you; yesterday I went for a bicycle ride on the mountain bike and we went off-road. We went about 4 and a half hours, we were out riding and you know, we were riding on some very nice roads and for quite a number of the kilometres that we could do, we could ride at a good pace, you know. On a mountain bike on gravel roads, 25, 30k’s an hour, it’s a good pace to ride like that, you know, in a good rhythm. We were on one of those roads, nice long straight roads, you know, and there’s a truck behind us and he’s letting us know he’s coming. We watch him and see he’s coming. It’s a nice road and he’s very respectful of us. We were probably riding about 30k’s an hour at that time, we were having a good ride.
So, of course, if he’s riding 40k’s an hour, that means he’s going to take his time getting to us and he’s also now respectful of us and careful of us, but there is just dust blowing everywhere. You know when you see these big trucks driving on this dust road, it’s just like this bomb of dust that goes with the truck, right? So, as this truck’s coming, the dust arrives at us before the truck gets to us. You understand? So, before the truck gets to us, the dust is already in our visuals. Now, the truck is riding next to us and it’s just dust. It’s like it almost goes dark because the dust is now engulfing us. So, [Pastor John coughs]… So, the truck is coming past us and we’re in the dust and, I don’t know, we maybe rode 5 or 7 k’s, I don’t know how long it was, behind the truck, in the dust.
So, from early in the morning, just because of the way I’ve been with the Lord, this ȇweek, you know, I was declaring how blessed I am, how good a day, how great a day and I was shouting about it and you know. Sometimes you ride with people and they talk on the bicycle all the time and all you want to do is to tell them to shut up because you want a bit of peace and quiet while you’re riding, you know. Nê, Grobs? Ja [Laughing]
Sometimes you have just got to say, “Hey shhh, shhh.” We’re having a nice peaceful moment on the bike here you know, in this case I was like Grobbies, you know. I was just chirping the whole time and I was singing praises and bless the Lord, bless the Lord, praise Jesus, praise Jesus. Fortunately some of those that were riding with me joined in and before long we were all praising, glory, great, hallelujah, all kinds of stuff was going on and as moments came through the day this was just [showing flowing movement with hands] As this truck came past me guess what happened? The Lord gave me a revelation.
This is what happened, this is what He said, “This is how the blessing happens to you, John. You’re going on your road, just doing your own thing and the next minute God the Father, like the truck, the anointing of the Holy Spirit comes from behind you and He brings blessing dust with Him. Before He even gets to where you are in your life, the blessing is already overtaking you and as He comes next to you and goes passed you, so to speak, the dust is just there, you can’t get away from it, you can’t move, you can’t do anything about it, it’s just there. As long as you ride behind that truck, the blessing is there.”
For the rest of the day, we get to talk about the blessing truck. I want to tell you that we are behind the blessing truck. The blessing truck has come upon us, it is right next to us and it is overtaking us. Our job is to keep staying with the blessing truck. It has overwhelmed us, because the blessing of God through Jesus living in you, the blessing of God, lives in you always. Jesus is blessed, so His blessing is in you. That blessing in you, gives you the power to live like Him for the rest of your life.
What He requires is that on a day to day basis you go, da-da-da-da-da, what is that? I praise You; I praise You, I worship, I rejoice in You Lord, You, I am a son of God and I thank You. Listen this thing doesn’t happen overnight, but the more you do it, the better it becomes. If you do it only at five o’clock in the afternoon for one sentence. Hey, Lord I missed out on blessing You today and telling You, how I think You are just wonderful in my life. Do it at least once, you know. Hallelujah.
Because actually what He does when He comes and He lives inside of you is that He gives you all of the ability that you need to go, da-da-da-da-da and here’s the chord progression, and here’s the thing and its natural and every time you pick up the guitar, it’s like, wow, this is getting easier and easier. Every time you pick up the Bible, I love my wife as Christ loves the Church, I want to go to Church, my desire is to be in Church because God says, “That is where all kinds of good things that can happen when the body of Christ comes together and all the gifts flow together and all our praises are together and the anointing comes, there’s a great.” I want to go to Church and then what starts to happen inside of you is that you say, “I want to tithe”, not because God needs your money, and I’ve always said this in church; if you think that we need your tithe and you’re not sure about your tithe, keep it. Because you’re going to need it more than we do.
But that doesn’t mean to say that God hasn’t put a tithing principle in the Bible. The tithing principle is not because He needs the money. He wants the Church to function because He knows the Church needs money to function. Guess what? What we heard today [referring to the band on stage] couldn’t have happened without money. This money comes because you guys have decided to bless, tithe and do with your money, the way God told you to do.
So, then we use it this way to bring blessing, but when you tithe, this is what happens. It’s like, I’m not sure what’s happening with my tithe, I’m not sure if my tithe is doing anything, I’m not sure if my tithe is doing anything. You don’t know how many times in your life, your tithe has stopped you from being retrenched, your tithe has stopped you from buying something that you didn’t need and you just walked out of the shop so that you could save the money. You don’t know how many times the tithe has actually brought you into situations where you’ve been blessed, found another job or even didn’t have an accident that should have happened. Because your tithe is an expression of your energy and your skill and your talent and when you give a tenth present of it to the Lord, you’re saying, “All of my life is represented in this tenth present of my money.”
Because I can’t give you ten present in my life, because I’m busy, but I’ve got everything that my life produces, is in the money so I give that to you as the first of my fruit and because I give it to you, da-da-da-da-da, da-da-da-da-da. What happens is, I wake up in the morning and I say, “Lord, I’m so happy to give you my tenth because this is the blessing activator, this is showing You that I am covenanting with You because of my trust in You. This is a part of my da-da-da-da-da. I am learning to trust You, I’m learning to walk with You, I’m learning to do the things that You told me to do.”
Chord progression, chord progression, chord progression. Come to church, do your tithe, get involved with the body of Christ. Wake up in the morning, give Him praise, give Him thanks. When you wake up in the day and someone wants to have horrible words about your boss, or about people that you know and you love and they’ve got things to say about them, you don’t, I don’t even want to hear it. I really mean that. I mean just this last week something happened and a very well-known Minister in the World, actually information came to us, and I said, “Actually sorry I don’t want to hear it, I don’t want to hear it.” “Why don’t you want to hear it, John?” “It’s not useful to me, he’s got to answer to God and anything that happens to him is his business and he has to answer to God between him and God and it’s got nothing to do with me.” “But can’t you learn something from it?” “No, I learn from Jesus. I learn from the Word. Then I learn from the people that God has placed in my life, that are older people, more mature spiritually that can teach me. I don’t need other people’s mistakes in ministry to teach me.”
It’s like this, if you go and do a business and someone makes a mistake in their business, you don’t go to your business and say, “Hey guys, let’s make sure we don’t do this mistake in our business.” No, you just run your business the way you know you need to run your business and you do what you need to do, right? You don’t go looking for other people’s mistakes all the time to make sure you don’t make those mistakes in your business. You run your business and then you just say, “Okay, well I think we can do better here.” And then maybe an accountant or a lawyer comes and he says, “You know what, this new law has changed and if you change your business like this and you do it like that, you can actually make more money, save more taxes, do like, because these new laws.” Huh, now I’m learning from someone who’s instructing me, I’m not learning from someone else’s mistake, who didn’t do it. Hallelujah, praise You Jesus.
When Jesus lives in you, the blessing is in you to live life because without the life of Jesus, let me just tell you you’re just going to blunder around with our own will, your own will is going to create a platform for you to do whatever you want to do. Your will creates a platform. If I will, to go cycling, like I did yesterday, I willed it, I checked it with the Lord, He was okay. You may say, “It’s ridiculous to check things like that.” I check everything with the Lord, because yesterday I hit some soft sand and some of the younger people that were riding with me, you know they are a bit lighter than me and stronger, it seemed like they floated over the soft sand. I’m a bit heavier and I don’t have the technique, so when my backside wheel caught in the soft sand. It went sideways and I corrected it and then that correction I corrected again, and by the time I got to the third correction, I was off my bike … and I landed on my backside.
The soft sand was very soft, and I knew I was going to fall and so, I actually had some fun falling. It wasn’t a bad fall, but you see, because I checked it with the Lord, I knew there was nothing serious going to happen to me yesterday, but those kind of things can happen very quickly and it you are riding at 40km per hour on a dirt track you can hit a stone and something can happen and you can come off hard and it can be sore. So, I check these things with the Lord, it’s okay, “Yes Lord, thank You for the blessing.” Because I know the blessings are in me. Check with You, da-da-da-da-da, I know what the voice sounds like, check with You, this is good, now I expect the blessing on me. And so, then I ride with peace. Hallelujah.
I go through my life with peace, and suddenly all the good things of peaceful living will be happening to me, all the time. All the time they are overtaking me, they’re like, it’s like this volume of cloud, that’s just blowing around me the whole time, the whole time because His blessing lives in me, that blessing empowers me, it gives me the ability to want to be like Jesus. It drives me to my guitar going, da-da-da-da-da, da-da-da-da-da, chord progression, so that I’m now, then I get to start making music, music, music with Jesus. Now I am looking for the anointing that can come upon me and rest upon everything that I do. Did you get something out of this today? Part of your chord progression is to say, “Amen.”
Won’t you all stand with me please? Hallelujah. The first thing that has to happen is that you got to have Jesus living in your heart. You got to know that this is real. So, you want to pray with me quickly? Put your hand on your heart like this. Say Jesus, thank You that You live in my heart, thank You that You saved me from my rubbish, from myself and from today You live in me and that I’m going to live for You with the help of the Holy spirit, in Jesus name, hallelujah. Praise the Lord.
See, now you have Jesus living in you and now you have the power in you, the blessing is in you. Now you just got to learn, da-da-da-da-da, so that you can learn about the blessing that comes upon you. In the weeks ahead I am going to teach you about that. Glory to God, glory to Jesus.
I pray that you are blessed going out and blessed coming in, that the peace of God rests upon you, the joy of the Lord rises up inside of you. No weapon formed against you will prosper. He protects you with the Word and the Blood of Jesus and everything about your life is blessed. Do you agree with that? Then say, “Amen.”
Okay, thank you for coming to church. Goodbye
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