Scripture reference: Romans 12:1-2 (MSG); Matthew 10:34-41 (NKJV); Matthew 6:33 (NKJV)
Hi! Welcome to Sunday morning church service. Glad you could join us. I know we’re having a slightly different start time, and I trust that you have been part of Sunday services somewhere in one of our ecosystems, one of your campuses, or one of our services to date. I know for some of the Johannesburg people; you’ll be having a meeting this afternoon.
I look forward to seeing you and praise the Lord. We’re enjoying an opportunity to slowly begin to get back together and enjoy each other’s company, begin to pray together, and just share with you all the goodness of God and what He’s doing in the ministry.
Definitely, we are in a very different time. I don’t think any of us would have pictured a time or expected a time where we would be coming towards the end of 2021, 18 months after COVID began to become a thing, and here we find ourselves almost at the end of a second year of disease management across the globe.
I have been reflecting, and certainly in our time that we have together and the moments that we are just sharing with each other and having some fellowship, you would have either noticed or will notice that I’ve been reflecting somewhat on how good God has been to us as a people, as a ministry, and all the productivity and the good things that have happened in the ministry since that time began. I thank God that He is ahead of anything that the devil wants to do, and He certainly prepared our ministry ahead of time to be ready for what has happened. The result of which is that I’m glad that God has continued to be good to us and bless us.
The title of my message to you today, which is going to be a shorter message than normal because of the times that we’re having together and the fellowship that we’re having together, but the title of my message today is Blow Your Mind: Get The Reward. Blow your mind: get the reward.
So, I want to just take you to The Message bible, and I’m going to read to you from Romans chapter 12 verse 1 and 2 out of The Message translation. 1-2So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Place it before God as an offering, all that you do, every day. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you. (Romans 12:1-2 MSG)
Now, if you read this passage of scripture out of the New King James or the King James bible and even, in fact, out of the Amplified Bible, it would read like; do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. The way this passage of scripture says, Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. So, don’t be conformed but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, here it is, without even thinking.
So, this is very clearly about your mind, what you think, what you put your attention on and how you actually function with your thought life, your emotions and where you’re placing your desire. It’s very clear that the Lord just doesn’t want us to be out there, culturally, just doing what we need to do because the culture does it, because culture demands that we behave in a certain way, that we must do what the culture says. It’s a big change of thinking that’s required for us to be able to really begin to think and act and behave the way God wants us to.
Now, when I say to you, “Blow your mind and get the reward,” I’m going to actually transition for a moment into Matthew chapter 10, verse 34, and I’m reading out of the New King James Bible. And it goes like this, 34Do not think that I came to bring peace on earth. Well, he might say, Jesus, in the book of Isaiah, talks about Him being the Prince of Peace, the government, we’re on His shoulder. He’ll be the Prince of Peace. Here He is saying, 34“Do not think that I came to bring peace on earth.”
Well, there’s a difference between someone who is a disciple of the Lord Jesus, then you have peace. But the very presence of peace itself, Himself, the very presence of life Himself, the very presence of God, and authority and life of God, Himself, comes to bring a sword. He says here, 34”Do not think that I came to bring peace on earth. I did not come to bring peace but a sword. 35For I have come to ‘set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law’; 36and ‘a man’s enemies will be those of his own household.’ (Matthew 10:34-36 NKJV)
Jesus is saying, I don’t even come to bring peace, but to bring a sword, and now He begins to explain that there will be those that will believe in Him, trust in Him, follow Him and serve Him. Their very act of serving Him will bring a sword. It will bring a sword from between a man and his father; the father and son will bring a sword between a daughter and her mother. I mean, these are the closest of relationships. Yet, Jesus is saying, one is going to serve Me, and one is not. So, I didn’t come to bring the peace between them. If you serve Me, it will bring a sword until the other one chooses or doesn’t choose Me. Verse 37, 37He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me. What?
You mean to say that actually, Jesus expects me to love Him more than my father and more than my mother? Clearly, clearly, 37He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me (Matthew 10:37 NKJV). Do you mean to say that I’ve got to love Jesus more than I love my son, or more than I love my daughter? Clearly.
Well, how do you do that? Because certainly, the love of a mother and the love of a father is so great towards a child. How can you say that I’m supposed to love Jesus more? Well, the thing about it is that if you are asking that question, then you clearly haven’t decided to love Jesus with all your heart. Because in loving Jesus with all your heart, He will show you how to serve Him and love Him more than you love, daughter or son. How do you know that you love Jesus more than a daughter or a son?
How do you know that? Well, you know that because you make daily choices, whereby you serve Jesus constantly, and you don’t allow the culture that might affect your children’s lives to affect you. Also, on a daily basis, if you’re serving God and God and Jesus, the life of Jesus is big and big and big inside of you, one of two things is going to happen. Your sons and daughters are going to follow Jesus like you do, or they’re going to make choices to not follow Jesus like you do. So, at that point, you’ve got to say, “I’m following Jesus anyway whether you do or you don’t.”
So this is not saying, and I want this to be clear, this is not saying that Jesus wants you, particularly to be at war with your kids, but it is saying that you must always choose Jesus before you choose what your kids want you to choose and others around you. In other words, He’s saying, “Me, Jesus, I must be your highest, highest priority.” I know that even now, as I’m speaking this message to you, this is Blowing Your Mind. It’s not blowing your mind in negative sentences. It’s causing you to have a different way of thinking. It’s saying, “Don’t conform to the world’s way of thinking about this. Transform your thinking.”
Verse 38, 38And he who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me (Matthew 10:38 NKJV). Jesus is clearly putting a statement out there. He’s saying the natural things that you love, the natural relationships that you have. Again, I want to say; He’s not talking about material possessions here. He’s not saying, in this passage of Scripture, He’s not saying, “Give up your house, give up your land, give up.”
He’s talking about things that are more valuable than land and property, and money. It’s personal relationships. He is saying, “Don’t let personal relationships be the highest form of your lifestyle. Let a personal relationship with Me, Jesus, Father, the Holy Spirit, let your relationship with Me be the highest level of life that you choose. If there are others that don’t wish to follow you in that, follow Me anyway. Rather, let your following Me become the standard of your life.” If you are not prepared to take up that standard, then you are not worthy of what Jesus wants you to do and become.
39He who finds his life, verse 39, He who finds his life will lose it. This is so clear. If I find my life in Jesus, I lose the other part of my life. And he who loses his life, for my sake, will find it (Matthew 10:39 NKJV). So, it’s very clear when I find Jesus and I find His life, I find life, even if I have to lose my physical life. The scripture refers to that, even if I have to lose my physical life, for the sake of Jesus, I find life. I find life eternally.
In this moment in time, this message is important, and it is strategic because God is wanting to make His church rise up and say, “We will follow Jesus, and we will make Jesus our Lord and our Savior, we will make the Word of God, our highest priority, more than any other relationship, more than anything else, we will make Jesus our highest priority.”
Verse 40, 40He who receives you receives Me, and he who receives Me receives Him who sent Me (Matthew 10:40 NKJV). So, now we’re getting down to the crux of it. So, as you live your life for Jesus, if someone receives you and the life that you have, you are receiving Jesus. If you come with Jesus and you receive Jesus, and that person receives Jesus, he is also receiving the Father who sent Jesus.
This is such a clear picture of natural earth delegation, and natural earth covenant between Spirit Man in heaven, The Father, Spirit, being Jesus the Man and the divine being, speaking to man who is a man, human and divine being. So, we all have the divine life of God in us, and he who receives that divine life receives all of the divine life, from Jesus to the Father, Father, Jesus, and human, human sons and daughters on the earth.
This is a powerful scripture because it’s saying if someone receives you, they receive Me. They receive Me; they receive the Father who sent Me. This is amazing delegation and transfer of authority and power to humans walking on the earth. 41He who receives a prophet in the name of a prophet shall receive a prophet’s reward. And he who receives a righteous man in the name of a righteous man shall receive a righteous man’s reward (Matthew 10:41 NKJV).
Remember, I said this, this teaching today, this message today is, Blow your Mind, Receive the Reward. You see, in this passage of Scripture, you have to have an understanding of who you are in Christ Jesus and what you represent in Christ Jesus. So, part of my series of messages, the previous message that I taught was, Blow your Mind, Terms and Conditions Apply, T’s and C’s apply. This passage of Scripture is Blow your Mind, Receive a Reward because you have to recognise that when you go somewhere, you go as a born again Christian. You go with the life of Jesus in you. When you go with the life of Jesus in you, and you declare that life, and you give out that life, the person on the other end has got to make a decision whether they receive it or not. If they don’t receive it, they put themselves against God.
Remember the beginning of this passage of Scripture He says, 34“Do not think that I came to bring peace on earth. I did not come to bring peace but a sword. (Matthew 10:34 NKJV) He goes into the relationship between very close people, blood, family relationships. He says blood family relationships are not higher. They are not more important than the Blood of the Lamb relationship. If you have a blood relationship in the Lamb of God with Jesus, it becomes the highest form of relationship. Why? Because Jesus died and gave His life for you. He shed His blood for you to be free from yourself, to be free from your eternal future that would have been in darkness, and your eternal future that would have been away from the life of God.
When you receive Jesus, you walk into any eternity that is full of the life of God; it is full of all the good things of God. People that are wandering on the earth, going about their everyday life and just going about things. Doing things and so consumed into the culture of the life that they’re living in. They’ve got to do this, got to do that, got to go to this party, got to go to that business function. Got to go here, got to make this happen. I got to watch this TV program. I’ve got to do this kind of thing, go play sport here, do this everyday life. Got to go to the grocery store, buy groceries, I got to go and have the car fixed, everyday life.
Some of these things are responsibilities, but there are even the responsibilities and the way you go about your everyday life that should not supersede the walk that you have with God. What should be happening is that your walk with God should be infecting and infusing everything that you do. Even the relationships that He’s talking about here he’s saying, those relationships are not as important as your one with Jesus, as your one with the Heavenly Father who made you.
So, again, let’s be accurate about this and let’s be clear about this. You don’t exist unless God made you. You don’t exist because your mom and dad made you or a biological man with a biological woman made you. You are here because God chose you. He put His spirit in you to be born in your body, and so that very recognition should tell you that that life source with God, the Father and with Jesus is the dominant pre-eminence, highest priority life source that you should have.
Now, I just want to speak for a few minutes about 41He who receives a prophet in the name of a prophet shall receive a prophet’s reward (Matthew 10:41 NKJV). This is a passage of scripture that is very often used in church in terms of giving to people. In terms of the things that God will say to the church and the way that the church responds to the things of God. Oftentimes, this passage of Scripture is used in terms of sowing a seed or sowing a financial seed. But the Scripture is so much bigger than that. Because the scripture says, 41He who receives a prophet in the name of a prophet shall receive a prophet’s reward (Matthew 10:41 NKJV).
Well, that’s not just money because prophets don’t function on the earth for money. Prophets function on the earth because they’re called by God to speak for God. They’re called on the earth, and they speak on the earth because they hear what God speaks. So, this kind of prophet is not the prophet who gives a prophecy. This is a prophet, who is a person who speaks on behalf of God, and God uses their gift to speak into the earth, things that He wants to accomplish on the earth, and He speaks the future into the earth. As he speaks the words out of his mouth, those words become God-seed words that will bring about things and will bring into being things that God wants to have accomplished on the earth.
If a prophet comes into your life, and he begins to speak. We certainly have prophets like that in our lives and certainly our ministry. If he comes, he speaks—we’ve heard that in this year—some of the prophets and some of the prophecies that have been given is that this year will be the Year of Divine Health, Divine Prosperity, and the Divine Life of God in the Local Church. We have heard that this will be A Year of Abundant Overflow. We have heard prophetic words that this will be a year where we Go Big and Bold on both Offence and Defence. These are words that have been spoken by God through men, the mouths of men, the gifts and the callings of men, these words have been spoken.
So, what is your reward? If you receive what the prophet says and what has been spoken through a prophetic voice. When you receive that, you receive the context of that message; you also receive the fruit that message is supposed to bring out. Let’s say, for example—and I would like to use one of our spiritual fathers and generals of faith that has gone on to be with the Lord as an example, Brother Kenneth Hagin.
You know, one day, he was running his ministry, and I forget the exact number, but I think he had something like seventeen staff members that were working in his ministry at the time. It was a significant amount 17 or 21 or 23, something like that. He had quite a lot of staff. The Lord spoke to him and said to him: “Kenneth, I want you to downscale your ministry.” He goes on to relay the story of how people would think that something is wrong, because after all, he preaches prosperity and he preaches health and he preaches wealth and a thriving, successful ministry. An increasing ministry doesn’t downscale.
Well, he obeyed God. One by one, he started to let people go, and he let them go to find another job, he let them go to find another job, and he let them go to find another job. He downscaled his ministry to five people. Everyone that had worked in his ministry went to another job. Not too long after that, things began to turn economically in the country, and certainly, a lot of people were laid off, companies were struggling financially, and there was a state of recession that occurred.
If he had kept his ministry at the level of seventeen or twenty or whatever that number was, he would have really probably shut his ministry down completely, because he wouldn’t have been able to keep the payroll. It would have damaged the reputation of his ministry. As it turns out, the Word that God gave him actually allowed him to downscale and, in a smaller version of his ministry, go through the recession and be ready for growth when it came through on the other side.
I recall some years ago, having a word in the Witbank church and speaking to the church and saying to the Witbank church, “There is an economic recession coming, and you need to pay off your debts and you need to have some money set aside to bring you through some difficult times.” I remember clearly saying, you must do this as soon as possible, because there is difficult times coming. I had that Word for the ministry, for the people in our ministry. I think it was the January timeframe; by April, one of the largest employment companies here in the town actually went into administration, and thousands of people lost their jobs. It wasn’t just the 5000 odd people that worked for that organization that were without work, it then was all of the subsidiary companies that would feed off that big company and be supplying that company, and all of their employees and all of those people began to lose their jobs, and businesses began to shut down, and an economic hardship.
You see if you receive a prophet, and you receive the prophet’s rewards. So, if you receive a prophet in the name of a prophet, I recognise it’s the prophet speaking now. It’s not John speaking, it’s the prophet speaking now. When I receive it, then I receive the prophet’s reward. What’s the reward? The reward is, I get insight into the future which allows me to prepare and walk by the Word of God, under the authority and the leadership and the wisdom of the Holy Spirit, to prepare for what’s coming. As I prepare for what’s coming, I’m in the best possible situation, to either prevent something negative, or to prepare for something good that is about to come.
If you receive the prophet in the name of a prophet, you will receive the prophet’s reward. Again, this has got to be taken into context of everything else that Jesus was saying before. Do not think that I came to bring peace on earth, I did not come to bring peace but a sword. You have to choose Jesus ahead of even your family members. You have to be in a place where you are ready to take up your cross and follow Jesus to the point where it might cost you your life. See in that context, if you are ready to receive the Word of God, then you receive everything that God has got for you.
The next one is a little more interesting because the first one is about a prophet. I mean, a lot of people will buy into that and say, okay, a prophet, I get it. It’s a prophet. The prophet is speaking for God, no problem. But the second part is very, very interesting because it says here, 41And he who receives a righteous man shall receive a righteous man’s reward (Matthew 10:41 NKJV).
So, what is this, that you have a reward of a righteous man? If we understand righteousness, this is a man that understands that he has this right relationship with Jesus Christ. He is in right standing with God. He stands before God with all of the knowledge that he, in himself, has no good thing, yet of Christ, he is everything. He knows who he is in Christ Jesus, and he walks in the ways of Jesus. He is a disciple of the Word of God. He loves the Word of God, and he walks in the ways of the Word of God. That’s a righteous man. A man who walks in the ways of God, and a man who knows what the ways of God are, and he loves God to the point where he will take up the cross to death. This is a righteous man.
So, what is it that a righteous man will bring to you for a reward? Well, number one, if you are a righteous person, and another righteous person comes into your life, and you receive him as a righteous man, you receive the reward of fellowship, you receive the reward of recognition of the Christ man that has come into your presence. Then, if you are in righteousness, that person receives the reward of coming into righteousness with you, into fellowship with you, because your ways are right ways. You walk the same ways. You talk the same talk, you behave the same way, then you don’t talk about poverty. You don’t talk about sickness and disease. You don’t talk about things that are, as I read in Romans chapter 12, about the culture around you that wants to fit you into their thinking that it wants to just drag you down and make your ordinary life, eating, sleeping, drinking, going to work, walk around life. It doesn’t want to go there, this righteous man says, I’m transformed in my thinking, I’m not conformed to this ordinary process life thinking, I am transformed into righteous thinking.
If you come into the presence and you walk with the righteous man, and you are not yet at that level, you will discover that that righteous man will not agree with you in some conversation. You might speak to them, and you find them quiet. Well, you might say words to them, and they can’t agree with you. Well, you might want to go to places, and they’ll say, “No, thank you.” And you say, “But hey, listen, we are both Christians, and we’re, we’re both…” “Yes, but I am walking righteously before God, walking in His ways, right ways. I’m speaking right things; I’m thinking right things. I’m not allowing this to happen in my everyday life is not going to drag me down.”
And so, because I receive a righteous man, I receive the righteous man’s reward. If I receive a righteous man, that means; here’s a person who’s bringing life to me the right ways of God to me, the right order of God, the right conversations, the right ways of God. As I receive that man into my life, as I receive that person into my life, wherever there is disorder in my life, immediately the righteous person that comes into my life will help me elevate the disorder and bring it into order, will help bring me out of my chaos, and it will bring me into the life of God. It will bring me out of darkness into light if I receive the righteous man.
I say this many times to people that have come to me for marriage counseling. I have no issue with saying to you that when you come and you talk to me about marriage, or you come and talk to me about biblical finances or economics, or you come and talk to me about Bible based relationships, or you talk to me about the spirit life of God. If you press my button on those issues, you’re going to hear the Word of God come out of me. Sometimes people have come to me, and they say, “Will you please give me some marriage counseling, please?” And I have to ask them the question. I don’t do this very much anymore, but I have to ask them the question, “Will you do what the Bible says you must do in order for you to have proper marriage counseling? Because what I’m going to tell you is what is in the Bible. What you see in my marriage, as excellent and as beautiful and as fragrant as it is, and that’s why you’re coming to me not just because I’m a pastor, but because in my marriage, you can smell the fragrance of God. You can see the beauty of God in our marriage. If you want this you’ve got to have, you must obey the Word of God and I will direct you to ways of God that you must live in to get this fragrance.” So, many people when I ask them that question: “Will you do this?” They say, “Yes, yes, Pastor, but tell us how we can fix our marriage.” I say, “No, no, no, no. I want you to answer the question: Will you obey the Word of God?” “Yes, Pastor.”
Okay, so here’s what I want you to do, and then I will give them clear instructions of what they must go away and do. Because I don’t have a super bullet, a golden bullet, nugget of wisdom, that ‘boom,’ it changes their marriage overnight, and they walk out of my office, and there’s romance in the air, and there’s a fluffy feeling that last forever. I don’t have that. I will say to them, “Here is the Word of God; go do it. That is the way I had to do it, go do it.” What they’re doing is now they’re touching on a righteous man. If they receive me as a righteous man instructing them, they will receive the righteous man’s reward. The reward is that as they do and walk in the ways of this righteous man, they will receive the reward of the ways that they should walk in and receive the righteousness. Remember this?
I’m going to close with this, but remember this—that in Matthew chapter six, verse 33, Jesus says, “Seek ye first the Kingdom of God, and His righteousness; seek first the kingdom of God. So, what did we get through first talking about Matthew 10, do not think that I came to bring peace on earth. I did not come to bring peace but a sword. You have to choose between brother and mother and father and sister, you have to choose between natural relationships, you got to be ready to pick up your cross and follow me. Seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteous ways, His ways of doing, being in right standing with Him.
That’s not perfection, that’s just knowing that He paid the price for you. So, I choose Him. When you do that, you become a righteous man. 33Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things shall be added to you, and more besides, all these things. It’s talking about anything you might need to eat, anything you might need to drink, any place you need to live or wear. That’s the whole of Matthew chapter 6. The last verse 33 says, 33Seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you (Matthew 6:33 NKJV). If you see here, 41And he who receives a righteous man in the name of a righteous man shall receive a righteous man’s reward (Matthew 10:41 NKJV).
I conclude by saying, Blow your Mind. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. When you renew your mind, you become a righteous man. You become a man that directly discerns the Word of God. You rightly understand how to walk in the ways of God, and then as you walk with God that way, and you are ready to give up your whole life and lose your whole life, you will gain it, and you will gain all the good things that God has for you.
Do you want a reward? I say, Blow Your Mind. Blow Your Mind and receive a reward? Blow Your Mind. Don’t be conformed to this world, be transformed. Blow Your Mind. Do not allow your mind to be thinking on all the nonsense and stupidity of what’s going on around the world. Blow Your Mind, be transformed. Don’t be conformed. Fix your stinking thinking. Blow it up. Have nothing to do with your old ways of thinking. This is a moment in time. Do not allow the thinking of the world on sickness and disease to come and affect your future. Don’t allow the thinking of the world about economic downturns and recession and all these kinds of things. Don’t allow that to be the guiding force of your life.
Seek ye first the Kingdom. Blow up Your Mind. Seek first the Kingdom of God. Change your mind about what you’re seeking, and seek first the Kingdom. Change your mind about seeking your next immediate thing that you want to buy, place you want to go. Seek first the Kingdom. Seek first God’s order in your life and seek to have that order in the right ways that you walk, in the ways that you go before Him. And the Bible says, all these things will be added to you. Certainly there is great benefit in receiving a profit, and seeing into the future and being able to adjust your life for what’s coming. But there is equally great reward in receiving the ways of the righteous and walking righteously, seeking the Kingdom of God. This is our life.
Finally, I have the last bit of news for you. When you made Jesus Lord and Savior of your life, He put everything inside of you. He gave you the heart. He gave you the ability. He gave you the power, and He said, “Come, you’ve got everything”. He gave you the Holy Spirit. You got everything it takes to seek Him first, receive a prophet, receive a righteous man, become a righteous man, you’ve got it all. Just change your thinking. Blow Your Mind. Don’t be conformed to this world, be transformed by the renewing of your mind.
Please agree with me now? I pray, in the Name of Jesus, that right now, you say, I submit my mind to the Word of God. I submit my heart, my thinking, my emotions to the ways and the Word of God, and I put it under the blood of Jesus. And I say, no weapon formed against my thinking, and the Word that has been placed in my heart, will be formed against me and will prosper. It will not come and will not steal what God has put in my heart.
I thank you today, Father, that You bless Your people that have heard this message. I pray, Father, that You would have Your face shine upon them and bring peace to them. I thank You, Father, that they will be ready to follow You in all their ways and not lean on their own understanding, but seek Your wisdom in every area of their lives.
I pray, Father, that sickness and disease does not come near them. I pray, Father, that you give your angels charge over them right now. They are blessed going out and blessed coming in. Thank You, Lord, that you preserve them and their generations to come. Thank you, Father, that you preserve their wealth and that You preserve their wellbeing and their peace of mind.
Thank you, Lord. Thank you, Father. In the name of Jesus. I pray that you are blessed as you go further on in this day and the week ahead in Jesus name.
Thank you for joining me on this digital Sunday service. Amen.
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