Scripture reference: 1 Thessalonians 5:23 (NLT); 1 Thessalonians 5:23 (AMPC); John 15:7-8 (NLT); John 15:8-11 (NLT)
If you came in this morning, you would have received a little card like this. And, it’s a relationship, it’s just to remind you that we are celebrating relationships on Valentine’s weekend, Friday the 14th of February. So, Pastor Sharon and I, we are married this year in March, the 16th of March. We will be married for 45 years exactly. That’s why it’s called Project 45, we’re going to just spend a lot of time this year celebrating relationships. Amen. So, I just want you to make that we’re going to have a really amazing evening. We are having some extra musicians coming in for that event. We’re going to have a music extravaganza. We’re going to set up the auditorium in a very different way, and we’re going to have a church party. Amen. We’re going to have a great celebration on that evening. And, so, just so that you know, Pastor Sharon and I intend on celebrating the whole year, 45 years of marriage. Well, why not?
I mean, we enjoy each other, and, I believe I really do believe this with all my heart. If you are connected with someone that has a revelation that God has given them and you are divinely associated with them, then you can receive all of the blessing and the anointing and all of the stuff that God has put on them. It’s accessible to you. It’s part of the reason I enjoyed being connected with Brother Jerry so much because my life increased by association with him. And all that he was associated with became mine, my right to connect to. Amen.
So, I’m so delighted to say that in this ministry, we have very, very little issues with marriages anymore. I mean, hey, marriages any given day, someone in a marriage is going to have some challenge with each other. It’s the way it works. But I’m not talking about daily working things out. I’m talking about we very seldom have to deal with people getting divorced and people having major, major issues in their relationships anymore. Well, that’s because there’s an anointing on this house. There’s a strength of unity and relationship in this house. Order of God is here, you know.
So, your pastors, certainly me and Pastor Sharon, I know, others, you know, your pastors that are in this church, we don’t have issues with lust for the other sex. We’re not committing adultery. We’re not doing stuff that’s opening the door to the devil that allows that devil to come into your life and come and have a go at you. Our standard of our walk with God in our relationship is a protection for you. Amen. So, it’s worth celebrating. Yes. Amen. Okay. You can be a little more enthusiastic this morning. You need to help me this morning. My voice is not as strong as it normally is this morning, but if you say amen, you’re going to help me this morning. That’s better. You see? That’s better. Amen.
I’m going to continue on this message of accelerating into our future. And in some ways, I’m talking about readiness. And I’m going to use a child as my example. And I’m going to talk a little bit about a child and a newly born baby and the early years of a child to give us some kind of reference point. And so, let me remind you of my key Scripture that I’m using for the time being. And that is first Thessalonians 5 verse 23. I’m reading it from the Amplified Bible and it says, 23 And may the God of peace Himself sanctify you through and through [separate you from profane things, make you pure and wholly consecrated to God]; and may your spirit and soul and body be preserved sound and complete [and found] blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ (the Messiah), (1 Thessalonians 5:23 AMPC). The New Living Translation says, 23 Now may the God of peace make you holy in every way, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless until our Lord Jesus Christ comes again, (1 Thessalonians 5:23 NLT).
So, in our meeting last week, I was sharing with you that your spirit is what makes you God conscious, your soul is what makes you conscious of yourself, and your body is the thing that makes you aware of the world around you. So, the soul is self consciousness. I then ministered to you from Luke 4 verse 18 and 19 about the spirit of the Lord is upon me and He has anointed me to bring deliverance and restoration to the various aspects of people’s lives. I do believe that this series of teachings that the Lord has put in my heart to teach you about is one of the least preached about topics in the church, and it is one of the most misunderstood topics in the church. And I’m believing that we as a whole ministry are going to increase in the revelation of this. In fact, I consider this to be so important that I believe that God is going to use these messages, in a very significant way around the world. I mean that because I don’t see too many pastors willing to take on this message in the way that God is giving it to me to take it on, okay.
Are you ready? When a baby is born and it comes out of a mother’s womb, what is the child most dependent on? The child is most dependent on survival, physical health, physical development, and physical protection. And so it only knows how to communicate with the mother, and I’m just going to use the mother. Don’t shout me down because I’m talking about one parent, okay. But the mother, God has created the mother to uniquely keep the child alive on the breast. The mother is uniquely positioned in the early years of a child’s life to sustain it, protect it, and keep it close to the mother’s body. So, not only does she carry it for nine months, but she’s uniquely designed to protect it for the short period after the child is born.
So, if a child has got any – a baby has got any kind of issues, it only knows how to react by making sound. Right? So, it’s going to cry, it’s going to make noises. As it gets a little bit older after the first week or two or three, as it gets a little bit older and some of the senses in the body begin to develop more, its eyes get to experience light in a better way, it can begin to make sounds of happiness or some kind of contentment sounds, let’s just put it that way. But for the most part, the way that it communicates in the world when it’s alive, just newly alive, is that it’s going to sleep and it’s going to eat, and it’s going to sleep and it’s going to eat, and it’s going to have its nappies changed, and all it wants to do is really sleep and eat. Right? If any of that is bothering it – gets a wet nappy, it gets uncomfortable, doesn’t really know what’s going on, it just knows instinctively there’s something not right and it makes a noise. Normally, it’s the kind of noise that draws attention. Look after me, something’s wrong. So, then the parent is left kind of guessing. Okay, I fed you, I’ve burped you, I’ve changed your nappy. Now what? You know.
So, most of the time, if there’s something difficult happening that you can’t account for, often, it will be something that the mother ate. So, if the mother eats a lot of garlic or drinks coffee a lot or something like that when the baby’s small, whatever comes into the mother’s body is going to get transmitted into the child’s body and sometimes the child will have issues in her, in the way that the child is functioning. It might get gas, it might get cramps in the stomach, it might, something might happen because of something mom ate. Right? So, then mom’s got to be a little more careful about what she eats in that time because if she doesn’t want crying babies, she must be careful what she eats. So, there’s a transmission from one person to the next in that level of growth.
Now when the child starts to get a little bit older and they start to, start making sounds and then they want to sit up and then they want to start crawling and then they want to start walking. What is the thing – there are two components of that child that are developing very quickly. The thing that’s developing quickly is the body of the child. It’s learning what its body is all about. The most fascinating thing to me is when a little baby begins to learn that it has a hand, you know, and that this hand belongs to itself. If you haven’t yet observed that, find someone that’s got a little baby and ask them when that starts to happen to observe it, you know. And it’s like they, you know, they have this in their mouth, but one day they realize that this thing that’s in my mouth belongs to me. You know, and it’s like quite an awakening thing, you know, this belongs to me. And then the next thing is when they realize their foot belongs to them because they have their toes in their mouth and they suddenly realize, I’m biting on my toe, but this is my toe. Right?
I mean, it’s quite an amazing thing to observe when a child becomes aware that this body belongs to me, you know. And then of course they learn to crawl, and when they’re learning to crawl, then they begin to start walking. There’s a new dimension of life that begins to open up to them and that means, “I can take myself somewhere and when I get to where I’m going, I can experience things. I want to touch something. I want to put something in my mouth. I want to push it and see what happens to it. I want to pull it and see what comes to me.” Come on.
So, what is happening is that it is learning the difference between its body that it now controls and its desire, and it is learning what its desire and its body is doing to itself. And so typically, parents have a challenge. If you have got expensive things on your coffee tables or in reach of a child, you do what to those expensive things? You move them higher because this kid is going to pull and push and touch. Until you go to someone else’s home with your kid and you visit, and their things are not high. Then you as a parent, spend your time saying, “Don’t touch”, or you got to take them in another room somewhere so that they can touch.
But the instinct of the child is to touch in some way, so it wants to learn. So, it is not just learning intellectually or its mind, but it is learning experientially. So, can I say to you this, not only is the mind, the intellect being stimulated, but what else is being stimulated is its soul, its sense of consciousness of, “What is happening around me?” It is learning to hear the sound of the mother or the father. It is learning to understand what light means, what darkness means, and when it has a bath, it gets into a routine that a certain day it will have a time of the day, it will have a bath and then it’ll be fed, and then it’s dark and then it goes to sleep and it doesn’t understand these things, but it’s learning. So, it is learning in its natural state, its world environment, but it is also learning experientially.
Now let’s go a little bit further and the child is now between 2 years old and 4 years old. It can walk. At first it is walking very slowly, very shakily, but it is walking and it is moving around. And then as it starts to get a little bit older, it realizes that it can do quite a lot with its body. It can move quite quickly and it wants to do a lot of stuff. Now the parents have to be much more engaged with this child because if you just leave the child to itself, there’s a certain amount of time that it can be… it is in a sand pit that it can be playing and experiencing, it can climb on things and it can do stuff, but it will only be for so long and then the parents got to get involved with the child or a caregiver’s got to get involved with the child because the child will get bored.
And when the child is getting bored and it’s not stimulated, it’s going to start doing things that may be destructive because it’s looking to have the push-pull experience. It’s looking to not just know what its physical capabilities are, but there’s something it wants to keep expanding. It wants to keep exploring. So, this time of engagement with the child, the parents need to be stimulating the child and they need to do things where the child can learn to talk better, communicate better, and now the predominant thing that a parent will do with the child is help them communicate. Right?
Tell me what’s going on. Tell me what you want to do, and I’m going to tell you what you can’t do because this is… the world is this child’s playground, and it doesn’t want to know that there are restrictions. It wants to do everything. But now it’s beginning to learn that the parents are putting restrictions on it.
So, the child… I’m just going to give you an example. A child, 4 years old now, wants to go out the front door, and it sees this big world, and it doesn’t… it’s just more world. So, it goes out the front door, runs out the front door into the street because it’s just part of my world. What happens if a 4-year-old kid runs into the street? Parents say, “Don’t. Danger.” If the child learns that it shouldn’t go into the street, what will happen next is when the door is open, it will wait. How many of your kids do you know will just wait after parents have told them one time, “Don’t”? Inevitably, something else is going to intervene. That will probably be a smack on the bum. Right?
It’s got to learn that there’s a consequence, that even though there’s a big world out there, there are dangers in that big world. And I have to teach you what the danger of that big world is by smacking you on the bum. Right? Some people may not believe in smacking on the bum. The Bible clearly says you must, but even if you don’t believe in that, then you will exercise discipline in some way. But you have to teach them that you can’t just run into the world because there’s danger in the world.
So, in this case, the danger is a physical danger, and because they do not have enough experience in the world, they do not yet understand the impact of that physical danger on themselves.
If they learn their lesson at about 4 years old, then when they get to 5, 6, 7 years old, they are probably going to have the capacity to run around the front garden and do stuff, maybe walk down the street to their friend’s home because now they have learned the dangers that are away. So now they’ll stay on the grass, and they’ll learn. I have to ask mom and dad, “Can I go to my friend’s house?” Then they can phone the friend’s house and say, “Johnny’s coming to visit, and he’ll be there in 3 minutes.”
This is a protection mechanism, but he’s got more freedom to go to Johnny’s house or to Jimmy’s house, and he’s Johnny and Jimmy, and so he’ll go to Jimmy’s house because mom phoned Jimmy’s mom and dad, and it’s okay for me to go. Right?
So, all the while, this child is learning about the world that they live in. At the same time, their soul, their experience of life, is developing, and they’re beginning to associate the perspective of consequences and reward. Right? So, they still predominantly live in a very protected state where all their needs are taken care of, but they are having to learn this concept of, if you obey and you stay within these rules, your life is still safe, it’s still good, and you can pretty much do whatever you want to do, but there are some rules. If you break those rules, there are consequences. If you keep within the rules, the reward is; you’ve got freedom. You break the rules, the consequences are pain. Come on. You’re looking at me like… Come on, just work with me this morning. I’m just trying to make this as practical and as real to us as possible.
When I say to you, at this point in time, I believe I’ve got nothing that I can prove this to you by. There are scriptures that give some kind of hint and indication towards this, but I believe that the child born, his spirit is alive to God. That child’s spirit is alive to God. It’s only in my view, it’s only when a child gets to a point where it can make its own decision about God for themselves, that when they get to that point and for every child it’s going to be a different age because as their self-consciousness and their awareness of their place in eternity and life and their identity as a human being comes into its place, it’s got to make a decision for God or not for God. But I believe that every child’s spirit is being created alive to God so that the parent can fill that spirit with the ways of God. So, if that spirit is filled with the ways of God, when it becomes aware, it will make the decision for God. Amen.
That’s why I believe that scripture in Proverbs that says, if you train up a child in the way that he will go, then the time will come and he will not depart from it. Let me just say it this way. Even though someone may have ways that they live life that look contrary to what they believe, if they have made a decision for God at the age of accountability, they are still God’s child. And this is a doctrinal thing that I’m not going to get into today because I don’t- but it’s what I believe. I believe. You know, there’s a lot of religion in the world that say any kind of sin, that any kind of Christian sins, is a sin that will separate you from God.
I was raised that way. When I was a young boy, some of my friends, they were having a birthday thing and they wanted to go to movies and, I mean I was maybe 7 years old and they invited me to movies in Joburg. My dad drove me there and in the days that I was being raised, going to movies was a sin. But my dad didn’t want to tell me that I’m not allowed to go to movies. He drove me to the moviehouse and made it my choice. But here’s how he said it to me. “So, now John, if you’re in that movie house and Jesus comes while you’re in the movie house, are you going to heaven or hell?” I kid you not. I kid you not, that’s what he said to me. “If you’re watching the movie when Jesus comes, are you going to heaven or hell?” So, I said, “Well, I don’t know dad.” He said, “Well, what if you’re going to go to hell? Do you want to be in the movie house?” I said, “No, dad.” He said, “Well, it’s your choice.” What choice do you think I made? I’m not going into that moviehouse. I don’t want to go to hell when Jesus comes. Right?
And so, there’s this whole thing about sin that the church and religion has put on people that if you’re in a sin state when Jesus comes, you’re going to hell. That’s like saying, if my son is not around me, my physical born sons are not around me when Jesus comes, they’re going to hell. They will always be my, it doesn’t matter where they are in the world, it doesn’t matter what they are doing. Once they are born of me, they will always be born of me. Can’t change that.
A real born-again experience is a real born-again experience. You can’t undo a real born-again experience. Doesn’t matter how much garbage comes into your head. If you push the button hard enough, they will say, “I admit Jesus Christ is Lord and Saviour and He is my Lord and Saviour.” They will say that, even if they get into an intellectual argument. I mean, Peter said that. Peter was public and said, “I don’t know that Man. I know nothing about that Man.” That didn’t change the fact that he believed He was the Christ and the Son of the living God. Under the pressure of the moment, he said the wrong thing. Come on. Hallelujah.
If you are a parent and you are teaching the child rewards and consequences, you are going to be in a place where, as they are getting older, you are going to put them through a place where you are going to give them the intellectual development that they need to understand the world around them. I’m going to just be as basic about this as I can.
If you are living in India where there are 1.2, 1.3 billion people and you are a little Indian boy or girl that is being raised in a village there, and your, you know, language is, “All in all. Yeah. All in all.” “I like some curry, all in all, you know. All in all.” They are always doing this [Pastor John swinging his head from side to side] with their head, all in all, you know. I mean, I know the Padaychy’s are watching, so. They know I love them.
But you know, I mean if you are that kid in India and you are being raised in a village, let’s just give it a context and you are 300 kilometres from Mumbai and you are in a village and there’s lots of heat and there’s lots of stuff you know, what you are going to learn culturally and educationally in that village is going to be very different to someone that’s growing up in Witbank. What you as a parent are going to teach that child is going to be an intellectual process that you consider. I see the Naidoo’s here. I just saw you now, all in all. [Pastor John Laughing].
What they are going to learn there is going to be very different to what we learn here because our culture is different. And so, you are not going to teach your kids what they need to know in case they are going to be raised up in a village in India. No. You are going to teach them what they need to know to be grown up here because of the social environment that they are growing up here. Yes?
How many of you know that none of this has got anything to do with God? I have not yet included God in the conversation. All I have been talking about is, that they have got to have physical development, they have got to have food, nutrition, they have got to be protected, and then they have got to be developed in their intellect and in their soul that they can identify with people, they know what the social construct is, they know what information they need to live life, and so they are developing in the social order of the day.
So, when we are told to go and preach the gospel to all creatures, we need to preach the gospel to creatures in their social construct, not our worldview. Hey. I mean, we have done a lot of missions trips, Malawi, Zambia, Botswana. I’ve been to Tanzania. I’ve been to Ethiopia. I’ve been to many different countries where we’ve done missions trips. There’s no ways … We did this, we handed out, I don’t know how many, Brother Joe and Jerry Savelle ministries. Brother Jerry, at that time, he helped us buy… Can someone remember how many bicycles we handed out that one trip? Was it thirty bicycles? Thirty? I think it was thirty bicycles. We bought thirty bicycles and we handed them out to people in different villages, mostly pastors, where we could find them so that the pastors could ride around and do stuff. Why did we buy bicycles?
Well, because we know in those areas, a bicycle is an extremely valuable way of having transportation. If I go and buy someone a motor car and give them a motor car, they’re going to do what with the motor car? They can’t even pay for the license, they can’t drive the motor car, they can’t do anything because their social construct and their level of economic condition is such that a car doesn’t mean anything to them. So, if I talk to you and you’re saying, “Listen, I’m believing God for a car.” It’s because in our social order, a car is the thing that we need to get around with, and in our social construct, economically, this is the thing that we can put our faith to get because our whole system and our world we live in is designed to have cars. But for us to talk, take a ‘car’ mentality and for me to go and stand somewhere in a village and say, “I believe God and God gave me,” and He said, “You know what, John? You’re done with your S500 Mercedes. It’s time to get yourself a Prado because your new season in your life is going to require that kind of vehicle.” And I go talk to someone like that in a village in Malawi or Zambia, they’re going to say, “What?”
What I’m showing you is that some of the stuff that we have to deal with is a soul body issue. It’s not a God issue. Hello. When a child is developing, it’s growing in the soul and it’s growing in the body and there’s a lot of development. Just bear with me. I’m really not trying to make this sound like I’m demeaning your intellect here. I’m wanting this to be a basic teaching so that you understand when we get to more important matters where we’re going with this thing. You understand that if I’m a parent and I’m teaching my kid the Bible and he’s three years old, four years old, five years old, and I’m teaching my child the Bible. What is the thing that he’s going to learn most from me? Do you think he’s going to learn about the words of my Bible teaching? Or do you think he’s going to watch me as I live my Bible teaching? He’s going to watch me. I’m the one who’s going to have the biggest influence in the way that he respects the Bible, the way that he respects my walk with God.
When the Bible says, “Train a child up in the way that he should go…” The biggest thing that I can give him is to say, “Watch me read the Bible, watch me go to church, watch me praise the Lord. Listen to me when I’m in the car taking you to school in the morning, praising Jesus. Listen to me as I make Him the first place in my life.”
If I want to teach my child how to physically develop and make sure that he’s physically protected and cared for, and I also want my child to learn intellectually, developing, and I want my child to learn the social construct and all of the stuff that goes with our world that we live in and not teach him anything about God; I’m setting him up to rely on himself for his whole future. I’m talking about little Johnny.
Okay? What I’m actually showing him with my life example is, I’m showing him that your physical development is very important, your intellectual development is very important, and the way that you live with people is very important, and all the while, I’m relegating God to a formal position in the household. Come on.
Most of the time, that formal position would still probably be, “We go to church on Sundays and I don’t care what you say. We go to church.” They go and sit in church for an hour service or an hour and 15 service, and there’s three hymns and a Psalm and a 40-minute session, and it’s about hell and repentance, and you better get yourself right, and then you walk out of the church and that’s our church done.
If you are very disciplined about this and you have a strong sense of what’s right, you might even read the Bible every morning and it might be at the breakfast table with all of the children and you might read a Psalm or you might read something and you might project to your children that this is an important part of our world and our life. But when you leave the table and you start swearing at people and you start shouting at people and then you come home and you drink every so often or you do other stuff, you’re teaching the children, God is a part of your life, but He’s not the most important part of your life. He’s just a part of your life.
“Hey. Pastor John, what are you getting at here?” I’m not trying to diminish or trying to judge you, parents. Here’s what I’m trying to say to you is, that even me, when I was raised by a pastor, my soul was taught that my walk with God is a performance. My walk with God is a performance, and I have to perform according to God’s standards by doing what’s right and what’s wrong. And the more right I do, the more I’ll be better with God, and the more wrong I do, the more I’m going to be separated from God. So, my walk with God is a performance.
So, it’s just another area that I’ve got to perform in, like I perform on the soccer field or the rugby field, like I perform in the classroom, like I’ve got to obey my parents; my life with God is a performance. My soul is learning. My soul is learning. Now as I’m a teenager and I’m developing, my body starts changing, my hormones start changing and whereas, before when I was eleven years old and I was climbing a tree with Sally, and Sally was my next-door-neighbour, and she was my best friend, Sally, suddenly Sally becomes 13 and I’m 13, and our hormones are changing, and suddenly Sally is different. By the time Sally and I are 15, we’re not climbing trees anymore. We’re having different kinds of conversations because now Sally is interested in my other friend Jimmy, who’s down the road, and she’s telling me how nice Jimmy is. But in the times past, Sally and Johnny and Jimmy just played marbles together. But now suddenly Sally sees Jimmy very differently.
All of the soul that is in Sally, and all of the soul that is in Jimmy is now going to play out into a whole new experience and everything has been based on performance. The whole social construct of the society that we are living in, is going to manage the performance between Sally and Jimmy. So, here’s what’s going to happen, Jimmy’s dad and mother and Sally’s mom and dad are going to say, “They can’t go and play climbing trees anymore. What they have got to do is, every time they are alone together, Johnny’s got to be with.” Why? Because now, they have become aware of a whole new life of soul activity that is based on body change. Come on. All this while, I’ve deliberately and purposefully not been talking about the development of the spirit.
Now let’s just take Jimmy and Johnny, for example, and let’s take that Jimmy and Johnny were growing up together, and I’m going to make it sort of more relevant to one of the sports in South Africa. Let’s say they grew up playing cricket together, okay? And they were always in the A-team together. And Jimmy and Johnny, one was a bowler and one was a batter, and so they always played in the A-team. They ended up going into the 1st team together and they are always helping each other. They are playing after school, you know, and Jimmy’s got this interest in Sally and Sally is interested, and now Sally is sitting on the sidelines, and she’s coming off netball practice and she’s coming to watch Jimmy play. Right?
There’s a whole new set of dynamics that are at play here. God’s not yet involved in this situation, but there’s a whole new world. And now the social construct is beginning to say, “You be careful of this, watch out for this, don’t do this.” But at the same time, we’re wanting to tell our children, “You can do anything you want to do, you can become anything you want to become. Your world is your oyster. We must unlock all of your potential and you must just go for life. Life is big. Life is grand. Life is amazing, and with all of what you’ve grown up, all the safety mechanisms you’ve had, the protection mechanisms you’ve had, all of the relationships you’ve developed, become anything you want to become. Do anything you want to do. Just go for it.” And the social construct around us says, “Yes, go for it. Whatever you want to do, you must do it and become whatever you want, experience whatever you want to experience.”
There’s a young person in our church here that, for a period of time, they lived in a different space and had a roommate. And, turns out the roommate wanted to have guys come and visit and stay in the apartment. And, at that particular time, thank God that the lady that’s in our church, you know, said, “No. It’s not going to happen in my apartment.” And the parents got mighty upset about it because they wanted their other daughter to actually have as many sexual encounters that they wanted to have because after all, this is part of the experience of growing up. This is the time of her life where she must do this kind of stuff. Wow.
If that’s what she wants, she must be able to do whatever she wants. Well, that didn’t last very long because, obviously, when you have two people staying in a place like that where the value systems are so different, something’s got to give. Thank God. Thank God. I’m merely trying to point out to you that whatever the social construct is and whatever you give permission to, then the permission is going to say, “That’s part of my experience. I can be what I want to be. I can do what I want to do. I must be able to chase down anything that I want for my life.” Right? That’s the social order that we currently live in, do we not?
You’re looking at me like I’m crawled out of a piece of cheese. You can say, “Amen.” You can say, “Amen.” Amen. So, all the while, this person’s soul, the soul of this person, the body of this person is being given every advantage to develop, to grow, to express, to become something powerful. The body, the soul, the intellect, the talent, the gifting, it’s been given the maximum opportunity to become spectacular and we have done everything that we can to promote this young being to become something amazing. Which parent doesn’t want their child to become something amazing? But what we’ve been doing is we’ve been focusing on all of these things in body and soul and, of course, we must balance them out by some kind of spiritual stuff.
But the spiritual stuff is just a part of what we do. It’s not everything that we do. Because, actually, what we are in the social society, this is really what we are all about. You know? It’s that whole thing, “It’s not what you know; it’s who you know.” So, you got to be connected in society so that the society can help to facilitate you become what you want to become.
This person gets to the age of 18, 19, 20 and this person now is well developed. Let’s consider the fact that this person went to the best education, schooling education they could get. They’ve excelled in sport life. They’ve grown up in a safe family environment, and now they’ve got to make a decision for their life.
The contest. Now suddenly, this young person becomes aware, actually, Jesus is a big deal. Jesus is actually my Lord and Saviour. Jesus is really the Saviour of my whole destiny. I need to follow Jesus. I want to follow Jesus.
Something happens in their spirit man. Remember, they’ve been taught as a young kid that Jesus is important, but actually every advantage has been given to their body and their soul but very little to their spirit. But because they even had a spiritual start when they were beginning, now Jesus becomes real to them. Now the social order of all of the investment into the body and the soul is so big that the contest of what the spirit man is looking for must be put down because our investment in each other is so big.
Are you paying attention? Is that why you’re so quiet? So, what does Jesus say? What does Jesus say to the young person? Can I tell you what Jesus says to the young person? John 15 verse 7, this is what Jesus says to the young person, 7 But if you remain in me and my words remain in you, you may ask for anything you want, and it will be granted! Excuse me. 8 When you produce much fruit, you are my true disciples. This brings great glory to my Father, (John 15:7-8 NLT).
Can I ask you, if everybody else has had the investment of a safe house, a protected environment, if everybody else has had good schooling, intellectual development, and everybody else is doing the same thing, do you think that brings glory to the heavenly Father? You just happen to have some of Jesus in you, the others around you have none of Jesus in them, but they had the same background. Right? So, just because you did a good job of raising your kid, talking about Jimmy, Johnny, and Sally, just because you did a good job in raising your kid does not make you good, but it might make you very socially, you got the green tick, dis ‘n goeie pa, it’s a good dad, it’s a good mother, it’s a good parenting, it’s a good lineage. It’s a good thing. They’re part of society. They understand their way.
They understand their part of society. They know how to fit, and we can work with people that fit with us and we fit with them. None of this gives glory to God. If you’re in India and you’re that little boy in the village, you have your own set of learning that’s going to look like the social construct that is also going to be he’s part of us, he’s part of our society, he’s part of our people, but he doesn’t even know God. He’s been taught how to follow Hindu or Buddha or some other God. Yes?
I said this last week, Steve Jobs, to my knowledge, for the most of his life, he had absolutely no recognition of God. God was not part of his life, but he was educated. He was creative. His soul was highly developed and attuned to the needs of the social order around him. He was gifted to use his talents to make money, but he never, to my knowledge, he never recognised God before he died. So, do you think that after he’s dead, God’s going to say to him, “You know what? Hey, Steve, listen you never recognised Jesus as Lord and Saviour in your life, but you know what? You did so much good for humanity. I’m going to give you a pass into Heaven.” No, that’s not what God’s going to do for Steve Jobs. When he passed from this body into the eternal life, the judgment of what he did with Jesus was instantly going to be the decision that was going to impact him for eternity.
So, now let me just finish reading my scripture. 8 When you produce much fruit, you are My true disciples. This brings great glory to My Father. 9 “I have loved you even as the Father has loved Me. Remain in My love. 10 When you obey My commandments, you remain in My love just as I obey My Father’s commandments and remain in His love. 11 I have told you these things so that you will be filled with My joy. Yes, your joy will overflow, (John 15:8-11 NLT). Praise the Lord. (Ps. John is coughing) Excuse me.
So, I’m going to just wrap up my message for this morning. But I want to just leave you with this. We are three part beings. Just because we’ve spent so much of our life developing our bodies and developing our soul does not mean that when you are now born again that you are automatically now a spiritual giant. So, what is it that we should have been training our kids with all of these years? We should have been training our kids, “Just come and watch me pray, come and watch me read the Bible. Come and do it with me. Instead of watching TV all the time, let’s put some teaching and some ministry on in the house that our house is filled with words of God. Watch me as I dedicate my life to Jesus and my whole being is committed to the Body of Christ and my world becomes wrapped up in God and all that’s important to God.” Right? As our kids are growing up, we should be teaching them and training this stuff.
So, if you want to know, I’m not advertising the Community Center this morning, but if you want to know why our church is so focused on helping parents become godly parents and not giving the responsibility of parenting your kids to schools, it’s because the schools are going to highly develop your kids in physical nature and in the soul of how to connect to the other souls that have got nothing to do with God. They’re going to be so well developed in the things of soul life that when it comes to the point where spirit life things have got to be taught, they don’t know.
Now I’m going to differentiate for you very quickly. When I was raised in a denominational church, I was raised with a lot of rules of do’s and don’ts. I can tell you that as a teenager growing up, just like any kid in a house, when there’s so many rules of do’s and don’ts, you are going to kick against the do’s and don’ts because you want to find out some stuff and some of those do’s and don’ts you consider to be ridiculous. Even if it is for your protection, you still think it’s ridiculous.
So, where do you think those thoughts come from? They’re from the inherently rebellious against God DNA that you were born with, the sin nature. It drives you to disobey. Come on. You can have the sweetest most compliant child in your house and then one day they just say, “I’m going to do my own thing.” You look at this 13, 14 year old kid and you say, “You’ve been such an obedient child all your life and suddenly you’re wanting to say no from when you always used to say, “I agree with you.” What happened to you?” That inherent anti-God DNA that you were born with, that sin nature kicks in.
Listen, you know, even with me, I’m talking about myself, raised up in a Christian home, I was filled with the spirit when I was 7, had an encounter with God when I, at roundabout my 15th birthday when He called me to the ministry. I served God all my life. When I left high school, I went down to make my own testimony. I wanted to drink, sleep with a girl so that I could have a testimony. I didn’t by the way. Where do you think that thought came from? The Holy Spirit? No chance. Where do you think that came from? My parents telling me I must go and sin like that? No chance. The inherent sin nature inside of me said, “You got to experience life.” It even used scripture, my own scripture, to help me go and sin. You know what I should have had is I should have had someone close enough to me at that point in time to come and slap me in my face and say, “John, what are you doing? You’re being stupid, man.”
Thank God, when I went into that bar and I’m going to sin tonight. This is my testimony in the making now. I’m going to sin tonight. I went there with everything, I’m going to sin tonight. Thank God the Holy Ghost was so strong inside of me that He just protected me the whole night. He wouldn’t let me drink more than a Coke. I just couldn’t get myself to order more than a Coke. I drank 3, 4, 5 Cokes in a row. I don’t know what happened, but it must have been this neon sign here, your innocent boy, but no girls came near me that night.
I know it was the angels, the Holy Spirit and the angels of God that was protecting me because He didn’t want me to open my soul experiences to a whole bunch of stuff that would produce lust in me. That would produce all kinds of anxiety stuff in my thinking, that would drive me in my flesh and drive me in my thinking, that now later on in my life, I’ve got to get rid of that stuff. And I’ve got to fight that stuff my whole life because I did it one night, and he captured me one night. Hey. And, nogal in the name of a testimony, that was my pure motive. “I want to be able to say one day, like all the others that have been preaching, I was a drug addict, I was in prison, I was this, I was that, and Jesus saved me.” I wanted a proper testimony.
And now I can tell you I never did any of that stuff. I’m delighted to say that the only woman I’ve ever slept with is this one [Points to Pastor Sharon]. Because Jesus kept me, not because I didn’t want to have another woman. My own head said, “You got to try something.” You see, I was having a war with my soul. That wasn’t so much about my body. It’s not like my body had been wakened through sex, and I was kissing all these girls, and going as far as I could get, and now I wanted to go the last distance. It was my soul that was telling me there’s stuff I have to experience. Hey. Praise Jesus.
Like now nowadays, if you’ve only slept with one woman your whole life and 45 years later, I’ve only slept with one woman my whole life and it’s like, “Didn’t you miss out on something?” I missed out on all that anxiety, all of that rubbish, all of the baggage that comes with all of the stuff. I missed – I skipped it. Praise Jesus.
“So, Pastor John, you know, what’s going on here.” You know, when we start to develop the spirit life and we give enough time for our spirit man to grow enough, yes, now our spirit man can start guiding us and be the lamp in our soul, be the light in our hearts. That spirit man, out of which all the issues of life flowed, that spirit man that becomes alive to God, that you are now abiding in Him and He’s abiding in you, that spirit man has got a chance to contest what your soul is telling you, because your souls had so much growing, so much developing, so much promoting, so much stuff, so much, so much, so much. Your soul is dominating your whole future unless the spirit man’s got a chance.
So, you know, most people – I’m going to just put it out there today, you all know this about us anyway, so I can say it. Most people that come into contact with us that have highly developed souls, I can tell you how you would know someone’s got a highly developed soul, especially a highly developed souls when it comes to church life, is they’ve got lots of opinions about the pastors, they’ve got lots of opinions about the way the churches run, and obviously, they think we are wrong. Obviously. I’ve had many people in the years that I’ve been doing this, I’ve had many people say, when I talk about marriage, they say to me that my standard of marriage is too high and unrealistic and that the way that I talk about marriage, they can’t live that way.
You know what they’re telling me, is they’re telling me that their evaluation of soul life in marriage has already told them that the order of God is not achievable or they’ve decided in themselves that I’m faking it and so that’s a good enough way for them to discount what I’m saying because it might be too hard. What they’ve just explained to me is that they are not prepared to give their spirit man growth enough so that the spirit man can get strong enough so that it can change the future of the soul man that wants to dominate them forever.
So, when your soul and your body have been taught all these years up to the age of 18, whatever, soul and body, soul and body, give it every chance you’ve got. Soul and body, soul and body in society, in school, in the soul and body, soul and body. The spirit man is this tiny little infant that’s just come out of the womb and it’s still sucking on mommy’s breast. And this spirit man now suddenly knows what’s right and wrong and, “I can hear from God for myself and I can do what I must do for myself, thank you.” And that spirit man, hardly can crawl. Let’s assume that they’ve even come to church long enough that they can walk and they’re 5, 6 years old. Here’s what they do is that they come and open the door, “Look at this whole world, Dad, you didn’t tell me about this whole world.” “You go out there, you disobey my order.” “Why?” Because there’s the street and you don’t know about the cars that can take you out in the street. Let me first teach you about the street.” “I don’t want to listen to you. I can walk. I can run. Look how good I am.” And so then, because they are actually adults in their body and they’re adults in their soul, but their spirit man are still infants, the pastor who’s the shepherd of their soul has to say, “You’re free to choose. You’re free to choose.” And then they run outside and suddenly a wasp stings them. “You didn’t tell me there are wasps out there.” Well, you wouldn’t hang out enough. I’m not even talking about the danger of being kidnapped or the danger of a car hitting them or anything serious. There’s just wasps out there. And there’s other kids out there that will just smack you in the eye because you’ve got a toy that they want. “You didn’t tell me about this.” “Well, you didn’t wait around long enough so that I could teach you.” Amen.
As we go in the weeks and the months ahead of us, as we go with this, I’m going to show you, we’re going to talk about as you give more development to the soul, it will set you up to be able to do so much in the soul. I’m going to give credit to Steve Jobs. I’m going to give credit to Elon Musk. I’m going to give credit to people, and I want you to understand me correctly when I say I’m going to give credit to them, I’m going to give credit to them for the development of their soul and the gift that God has given them and how powerful your soul is that it can accomplish many, many great things.
Have you ever heard comments like this when you see someone achieve an amazing feat? I mean, we’ve got a guy who lives in South Africa. I mean, he swims like how many, I don’t know how many miles in ice water. He’s written books. I have forgotten his name. Anybody remember his name? Kit, I’m sure you know his name. You don’t remember his name? That guy, Pugh. Yes. I mean, this guy is an adventurer. I mean, he’s accomplished things that are just incredible in his body, and most of it is in water. Right? Yeah. I mean, this guy can swim in ice cold water. He can swim great distances. He’s trained his body to do things because of the control that his mind has over his body. So, in anybody else, their body’s telling them stuff. He’s telling his body, “I trained you. Shut up. You will do what I tell you to do. I know what’s going on with you. I’ve trained myself and I know how much I’ve got to feed you. I know how much I’ve got to do this. I know and you will do what I tell you to do.” He’s developed his soul so powerfully. And so, here’s what we celebrate. We celebrate the power of the human soul to conquer great things.
I will celebrate that but there’s a danger because it teaches us to develop our soul and everything we hear is, “You need to learn to develop your soul where you can do great things.” I remember when I started last week what I said; the body is world-conscious, the soul is self-conscious, and the spirit is God-conscious. So, I’m going to tell you more about how great the soul is and I’m even going to tell you how you can develop your soul.
I want to tell you when my sons, how old were they, Sharon? I don’t know. Maybe 14 years old, Brynn, when I gave him the first book, 14, 15 years old. I gave him a book called Awaken the Giant Within by Tony Robbins. Anthony Robbins, he was then. I think he’s now called Tony Robbins. He’s one of the greatest motivational speakers in the world. He has now developed himself into an 8 billion dollar organisation. I gave my sons the book, Awaken the Giant Within, because the tools that were available of visualisation, of focus, of discipline, of many, many, many things that was written how you can become the greatest you, you could possibly become. I gave it to Brynn. I said, “Brynn, you need to read this book because this will help you.” And then when Garth was a little bit older, I said, “Garth”, that book was 7 or 800 pages thick and I gave it to a 15 year old to read. And then I helped them. “Let me page with you. You got to know this.” And I would work through it. And then about a year later, the Holy Spirit got all over me. He said, “John, you’re doing the wrong thing here. You’re giving your sons the wrong stuff to learn.” I went and I took the books back and I said, “I want to apologise to you boys. The Holy Spirit has come all over me.” And I had to start telling them how God wants us to first grow our spirit man, so that when our soul has got things that it can learn in the natural tools that the spirit man knows how to use it and not the soul telling the spirit man what it can do. Because greater is He that is in you than he that is in the world. And the greatest one that’s Jesus is in you and nothing is beyond your asking or your doing, if you do it in Him and Him in you.
Then the full power of the human being can be released. But we want to limit our souls and our lives to body and soul. We don’t want to give enough to the spirit man. We want to relegate the spirit man to a couple of minutes in the morning of praying. “Thank You, Jesus. Thank You, Jesus. Thank You, Jesus. Thank You, Jesus.” And we’ll read a scripture and we’ll do some things, and we’ll do a bit of this and a bit of that, and we’ll go to church, and we’ll say, “Okay, but let’s develop the soul.” Because we know how to do that. There’s tools for that. But the church, when the church says, “Let’s pray in the Spirit.” [Pastor John prays in the Spirit]. “I’m not sure if I believe that stuff, but okay, I’ll believe that stuff. But while I’m praying in the Spirit, [Pastor John prays in the Spirit], my mind is thinking about something else.” Yeah, that’s the contest of your soul and your spirit.
One day, Brother Jerry, he asked me to come and say some words in a church service. I really, I was sitting on the front row and I knew he was going to ask me to come and do it. Two minutes before he asked me, the Holy Spirit alerted me, “Brother Jerry is going to ask you to come and say some stuff.” Then He said, “You need to flow with the Spirit about speaking in tongues like this.” I got up there, I said, “Yes, Lord.” And when he said, “John”, I was ready. I came up and I was in the church service and I began to pray, and then I began to teach according to the lines of the way the Holy Spirit had told me. And as I was speaking, I realised these people, they don’t know what I know. They are not ready for this teaching. So, I cut it short. This is the Holy Spirit now. He told me to say what I was going to say, but at the same time, He was teaching me something that if I continued down the line here, they’re not ready to receive everything I had to say, and I need to stop now. Hey?
That’s because the power of the Spirit was stronger inside of me than the pull of the souls that were in the congregation. They wanted to hear what I had to say, but they weren’t ready to hear what I had to say. And Brother Jerry sensed the switch in me, and he even looked at me and said, “John, there’s nothing more you want to say?” I said, “No, Sir. I’m done. Thank you.” Hey. Praise the Lord. You know the most powerful you, the most powerful you is not your soul. The most powerful you is the renewed, recreated Jesus that’s inside of you. That’s the most powerful you. Now, if you do not see the spiritual results yet of what you’re wanting to become, don’t quit on the spirit life and go back to growing what you know to do in the soul. Because once you quit the spirit life and you keep going and you go back to the soul life, you will never grow beyond the point you’ve just quit. So, the minute you turn around and you say, “I’m done with this stuff. I can’t make it. I can’t. I’m not ready to make that commitment.” God will bring you back, and life, circumstances will bring you back to that point because that’s your limitation. That point that you’ve said, “I’m not going further with God, I’m going back to my soul because that’s what I know best.” That’s the point where you will always be limited. Hello? Praise Jesus. Praise Jesus. Hallelujah.
Well, the Holy Spirit has really helped me today. Because, in my physical body, I was really… I asked the Lord to help me today to get me through the service, and thank God He did. Amen. And the devil is defeated in my life and sickness and disease is not my portion. And I said to the Lord this morning, “I’m going there in faith not because I have the strength to do it, but I’m going there in faith.” And so praise God, we win. We win. Hallelujah. Praise Jesus. Praise Jesus. Glory to God.
Because I know this thing about the body, the soul, and the spirit is much more important than we think. And so many Christians… I’ll tell you I’ve been restudying the book, one of the books that I read years ago. And, and I’ll tell you, actually when I was reading it, I’d forgotten that so much of what’s happening in the church today is about soul power. There’s no anointing, but it will feel like anointing because of soul power. But most pastors and preachers don’t want to preach about this because then they might lose their audience. Yeah.
Anyway, you can say, “Thank You, Jesus. You got a Pastor that’s bold enough and courageous enough to come and take this stuff on.” And I’m transparent enough and vulnerable enough before God to say, “If I make the wrong thing, You fix it, Lord.” You know? Because if we don’t learn this stuff, then who’s going to teach it? Yeah. Amen.
And so, now I’m sure you want to sow some seed, do you? Oh, only Pastor Christi and Pastor Sharon say yes. Thank you, Mari. Does anybody else want? Yes? Do you want to sow some seed? Amen. Shall we take up an offering? Yes. Come on, church. “Come on, Waldus come and take up an offering, please.” Hallelujah.
I know that when I… hey, I trust that parents here you don’t get down on yourself because of what I’m teaching? Because there’s no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus. This message is not about condemnation. I’ve had some very serious conversations with my own sons about mistakes that I made in raising them, but at the time I did the best that I could. But when I learned better, I had to do something better. And I can’t tell you… what I did was the best when I’m no different now and I’ve got to help you make better decisions too. And as a church, we’ve got to help to do better. And it doesn’t help I get down on myself because I could have done better with my kids than I did do. Because at the time I was being the best possible father that I thought I could be.
So, hey, with no judgment, no condemnation, no nothing, but we’ve got to work together to do better. Amen. Praise the Lord. And God said He will take the children because He wants a new generation of children, a new generation of Joshua’s, a new generation of Caleb’s. Hallelujah.
Praise the Lord. I want to tell you that some events that have happened in the church recently caused me to understand something. I want to tell you that I believe that God is raising up mature women and mature men in the church that are going to be spiritual mothers and fathers – let me just call them mature women that are spiritually in the order of God to be mature women in the church. And mature men that are mature in God and mature in age and they’ll be mature men in the church. I don’t want to call them elders because elders have a special spiritual identity. But they are women and men in the church that are mature in age and they’re mature in life. As time goes by we’re going to identify them and we’re going to talk about them just as mature people that you can go and talk to that have an influential role in the community because this is something that the Lord wants to raise up. Amen. Praise Jesus. Won’t you all stand with me, please?
Just raise your hands to heaven and say; Lord, we are so grateful and thankful and we bless You and we are just eternally grateful that You are the best, Father. You have provided for us, You protect us, You guide us, You direct us, You lead us and we can put our trust in You 100%. I thank You, Father, that You will continue to provide for us and our seed that we sow to You, is an indication of our love for You, it’s an indication of our trust in You, and I pray, Father that whatever decisions we make in the ministry, that we will have the wisdom and the understanding to make good wholesome decisions for the best use of the whole body of Christ. We thank you for it, Lord, in the name of Jesus. Amen. Amen. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Thank you, Jesus. Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord.
Won’t you just put your hand on your heart like this? And say; I’m a child of God. I obey the Holy Spirit. I receive the Word of God. I love Him. His words abide in me and because of that, I can ask whatever I want and He will do it for me. I thank you for it, Lord, in Jesus’ name. Amen.
I pray that the peace of God rests upon you. Nothing missing in your life and nothing broken. Blessed going out. Blessed coming in. Protected in all that you do, in Jesus’ name. I declare that no weapon formed against you prospers. The Bible says that the enemy will try and set traps for you, but not one of them will succeed because His Word says He will keep your foot from hidden traps. So, they might be hidden and you can’t see it, but you will walk without being caught in a hidden trap because God is with you, His angels are guiding you, guarding you, directing you. Do you receive this in Jesus’ name? I declare that you are free from sickness and disease and you are living well and healthy and strong, in Jesus’ name. Amen. And you can say the same; and you too, Pastor John. Amen. Thank you. Bless you all. See you at 5 o’clock. Amen.
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