Rick Renner preached a message that when Jesus was in the boat with His disciples, He spoke to the wind (Mark 4). The Greek interpretation was He humiliated the wind, and He then literally said to the sea, “Shhh!” He rebuked the wind and told the waves to be quiet.
It’s been clear to me since, maybe the middle of last year, there was an increasing awareness and a heightened state of persecution. Certainly, Pastor Sharon and I have experienced persecution. But persecution, if it is coming for the Word’s sake, is a good sign because persecution only comes because God is doing something.
The wind in Mark 4 went from a big noise, very threatening, very intimidating, to nothing. Once He dealt with the wind, He spoke to the waves and said, “Now be still. Stop coming into the boat.” That interpretation of the Greek is literally that these waves were chucking water into the boat. That was the scheme of the devil to take Jesus out with His disciples. He could have stopped the ministry right there. Jesus just spoke the most significant Word about the sower sows the Word. It’s the biggest change that we can make in our lives, and now He’s on His way to create a major deliverance and the devil is coming after Him in between.
When I came to share the vision with you last year – Limitless Impact, I am always a little bit reluctant to share vision because I know every time you share a Holy Spirit-inspired vision, it’s like the enemy throws everything at it to try and stop it. And no surprise, suddenly, everybody started to tell me, money’s dried up, business is drying up, our relationships are under pressure.
God needs us to play a part and when we release the vision and we are moving into it, the enemy says, “I’m going to try and stop everything in its tracks. I’m going to come after your people, your resources, your health, your relationships. I’m going to throw everything, I’m going to whip up the wind, I’m going to chuck things into your boat, and I’m going to see if you will capitulate to the intimidation.”
I’m here to declare to you today that we are not going to capitulate to intimidation. We stand up and we say, “We intimidate you back, devil. We completely humiliate your act of trying to come against us. We stand against you.” Brother Jerry always used to teach us, when you’ve done everything you can and know to stand, you’ve got to stand. That’s our part. By the leading of the Holy Spirit, He said to Pastor John, “You got to call to prayer, call to prayer.”
We say: The Lord is with us. We know that our Master is with us. We know that our Teacher has taught us and will continue to teach us. We are full of courage. We are full of strength. We are bold as a lion. We have the Lion of Judah on our side.
We’re not going to lie down and just wait for someone to try and help us out of this. We are coming to early morning prayer. We are giving our time and energy. We are giving our words. We’re giving our intercession. And we’re going to pray for each one of us. We are going to pray that the Lord of the harvest will release a great harvest of souls into our lives, into our ministry. We are going to have a spiritual response. We say no!! We humiliate you wind and all of the chucking at us that the devil wants to do. We say, ”Shh. Shh”
Do you see what has happened just because we started praying in the morning? The Lord led me to listen to that message. We are all together in agreement. We are united in faith, we are united in our vision, we are united in our purpose. We are the body of Christ and we are part of the greater body of Christ. We are a proper authorised Ecclesia, body of Christ, because we are a body that understands governance and authority. We understand what God has given us in the Spirit.
I want you to point your finger and say, “Wind be still. All of what you bring against me, I command you to stop, in the name of Jesus. I do not receive what you’re trying to bring to me. In the name of Jesus. Be still in my life, you have no more noise to make in my life. Be still in Jesus’ name.”
I want you to imagine, whether it’s a relationship, whether it’s health, finances or business opportunities. If it’s all of that, then say, “All of that!” Business come, in Jesus’ name. Finances come, in Jesus’ name. Relationships be restored, in Jesus’ name. We are going to the other side, in the name of Jesus.
Now we speak to all of these areas of our life, and we just go, “Shh. Relationships shh, business shh, bills shhh, personal finances shh – be still, in Jesus’ name.”
Now, by the leading of the Holy Spirit, we need to pray in the Holy Spirit that all of these things, we are going to underscore them because the Holy Spirit knows what the will of the Father is for us.
There are some of you that have had this wind blowing against you and waves filling your boat for some time now, for months. You have got to start speaking out of your mouth that you have victory and that everything is subject to change. And where there’s been no change till now, the change is happening right now, in the name of Jesus. Everything that God has spoken now is His will for our lives, and coming into order right now in the name of Jesus.
Relationships are coming into order. Health and healing. Some of you have had health problems and you said, “Lord, I know that I’m healed, but I haven’t got the full healing yet.” I’m telling you, your healing is yours, right now. Relationships that have been sticky and have been going nowhere and seem to get stuck in mud. It’s like, hey, you’re going to get up out of that quicksand of that relationship, and you’re going to walk like nothing has been happening in Jesus’ name.
I know that there’s some people whose personal finances that have been connected to what’s happening in business seem like – “We just can’t get the breakthrough.” I’m telling you, this is our moment. The waves, the wind is still, the waves are going to go, “shhh”, and you are now going to the other side where miracles are waiting. A new authority is coming in your life, in your business, in your homes, in your places where you live, in Jesus’ name.
When you get up tomorrow morning for prayer you say, “Praise You, Jesus. Praise You, Jesus. I’m going to give You thanks today. I’m going to give You praise today. I’m going to give You glory today. I’m going to praise You and I’m going to go and pray, but I’m going to praise You.” Because you are going to the other side.
Remember, the soul is self-centred, your spirit is God-centred, and your body connects you to the world. Now, what do you do as a Christian? Where is your development supposed to be? It’s supposed to be in your spirit because God is a Spirit and those who worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth. God has a plan and His plan is that He wants to be your God, your Lord, and He wants you to live His ways.
If I’m going to put God first in my life, then the first thing I must learn is what my spirit needs because as my spirit grows, it will have more dominance, more leadership in my life than my soul. If my spirit is leading my life, now I’m worshipping God in spirit and in truth. Therefore, truth gets to lead my life, not facts and knowledge.
What are we supposed to do as a Christian? Before you go to visioning, before you go to planning, before you go to goal setting, I want to recommend that you do the ‘God’ thing and that you meditate on the Word of God day and night.
The minute the church gets out of soul power and moves into spirit power, you can release the power of a soul that’s submitted to the power of the Spirit of God. If you just develop soul power, you will achieve great success, but you can never thank God for it. The problem in the modern-day church is that the modern-day church has developed their spirit life in their soul and they think it’s the same thing.
8This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night that you may observe to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success (Joshua 1:2-8, NKJV). This is a God-way of meditating. You keep the Word of God, His ways, before you, day and night.
Meditation on God’s Word creates a root system. If you had to ask me, “Pastor John, what do you spend the most of your time thinking about?” Then I will tell you that most of my time, I’m measuring my words and my thoughts in line with God’s Word. Whatever I’m doing, I’m going back to the Word of God all the time. What does the Word say about this? I’m thinking about the Word and then I would speak the Word out and then I would act in line with the Word because now I’m sure that my soul and my spirit are behaving in line with God’s Word, not in line with my soul.
I can honestly say to you that everything that I have got wrong in my life, it’s for this one simple reason; wherever I’ve done something wrong, made a mistake, it’s because I’ve meditated on myself, on what my desires were, and what I wanted to accomplish. Every time I meditated on His Word day and night and I kept His Word and His Ways and His Will as my foremost motivator, I was always going to be successful.
Do you know that because you sow your seed and because you sow your gifts and your callings into this ministry, God is bound by His honour to make sure that you have everything that you have need of. Sometimes it will be in the form of wisdom. Sometimes it will be in the form of insight. Sometimes it will be in the form of new things that will come to you; new relationships, new circumstances, new things. He is bound by His honour to answer your seed and to answer your faith in Him as you sow your seed.
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