The number 24 biblically represents God’s divine order and the completeness of His plan. In scripture it points to: Perfection and thoroughness of God’s Word. In 2024 God is saying, “Reset now, because we’ve crossed over.” Twenty-four may signify, based on Hebrew words: a divine shift or a season of change in one’s life. Best we be ready for the divine order and the completeness of what God is doing with us. It encourages us to trust in God’s guiding hand and to embrace new opportunities He presents.
There is no confusion in God. Confusion comes from the devil, or it might just be in your mind via the devil. God is a God of order and it was His order for me to be in Witbank. Because He wanted to establish His order through a people that would obey Him in the geographic location that He ordained us to be in. People do not want to receive the order of God – they want to tell God what order they want in their lives.
God is a covenant God. When He deals with covenant, He’s dealing in the long term of life, not short term. This church is not confused. We know the voice of God. We hear the voice of God. We are a praying church. We are a church that’s committed to the Bible, not to a doctrine or a philosophy. We are not committed to an organizational way of doing church. We are committed to the Holy Spirit, to Jesus and to God. We are truth seekers.
Satan said, “I will. I will. I will. I will.” The covenant that Jesus came to establish with us on the earth isn’t about “I will”. Jesus said, “I’ve come to do the will of the One Who sent Me. I’ve come to do the will of the Father.” The more you live in, “I will,” the more you are separated from God, and you live in depths of darkness that you don’t even know how far you’ve been removed from the light because it gets so dark.
Jesus said, “I’m going to come on earth like Adam was, but this time, I’m not going to raise Myself up to be like God; I’m only going to serve God. I’m going to worship Him only.” Jesus came because God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit set up a covenant among Themselves before They even created the earth so that, when man gets it wrong, Jesus will come and set it right. Their covenant agreement was between Them – unbreakable, unchangeable.
What Jesus did was just worthy of Him having our praise and our worship because He is our Savior. He saved us from ourselves. He saved us from our own philosophies and our own ideologies and our own created ways.
There’s a place that God calls us in that if we recognise God’s hand at work, this is where God’s blessing rests on you. This is where it happens. When you recognise God’s called you to who He’s called you to, and you start to walk in those things, then the favor and the blessing is on you.
What is the most powerful part of my relationship with Pastor Sharon? Is it because I’m the head of the home, or is it something else? Who is Sharon’s head? Jesus is Sharon’s head. “But Pastor John, there are so many scriptures about how you must love your wife as Christ loves the Church and give yourself up for her”. That is not headship, that is serving. I’ve heard people preach all over the world that man must be the spiritual head of the house and women all over the world want men to be the spiritual head of the house. It’s doctrinally and spiritually inaccurate, and it has caused way too much confusion in the Church. It is more important to God that I am spiritual than to exercise spiritual leadership.
Pastor Sharon said to Pastor John, “I love you because I love God so much that the way I love you is the highest kind of love that I could ever love you with. Because I love God as much as I do, it doesn’t matter what you do as a man, I love you the same.” So then it didn’t matter that over the years I’ve got a bit of a belly because she still loved the more man that I was. Because the love that she had was a love that God gave her to love me.
God never intended the woman to stand in judgment of the man to judge whether he’s the spiritual leader of the house. God’s calling me to be a spiritual man and He’s calling Sharon to be a spiritual woman. Because as a spiritual woman, she can be all the woman she needs to be to me. As a spiritual man, I can be all the man that I need to be to Sharon. I don’t have to say, “I’m exercising spiritual leadership now, Sharon.”
Who’s the spiritual leader of a marriage between a spiritual man and a spiritual woman? It’s Jesus. Jesus was the head of that woman when she was single, He’ll still be the head of that woman when she’s married. If her husband asked her to do something that’s out of the will of God, she must obey God.
What is the most powerful thing that Sharon and I can do to exercise spiritual leadership in our lives? I do what the Father says I must do. We find a scripture, based on His covenant that He has with us. We get into agreement on the scripture, then the power of eternal covenant and the power of human covenant and the power of God’s order is altogether in agreement. The most powerful thing that we can do is get into agreement. It’s not for me to tell her what we do next in the house.
What happens if you’re in disagreement? You go to the Word, you get into the power of agreement in the Word, and then you wait for God to change one of their hearts or both your hearts to find an alternative solution.
A wife has no judgment over a man’s spirituality: “You don’t pray the way I do. You don’t read the Bible as much as I do. You don’t listen to praise and worship the way I do. So, you’re not as spiritual as me. Therefore, I have something to say. And if we make decisions, I’ll take the position of spirituality here.” That is out of order.
Why would I be talking like this? Because the enemy of darkness, that dark ruler that Jesus was talking about, where Jesus says, “He has nothing in Me.” Because He always did the will of the Father. Our problem is that we have so many intellectual, doctrinal issues that we want perfected in our life before we obey God or before we do something that’s honorable before God – that the ruler of this dark world has something on us. The devil’s been around thousands of years. He knows by now how to touch you and your triggers and your emotional stuff and your soul stuff, and he will find the most perfect way to capture you.
We got to live in the Word. We got to live by the Holy Spirit. And we have to learn to be accountable to each other. The Holy Spirit speaking to you is your responsibility. But what He tells you, it’s your accountability to the church to identify that He did actually hold you responsible for what He’s called you to be responsible for. Responsibility and accountability are two different things. I might be responsible, but if I’m not accountable to anybody, then sooner or later, my responsibility is going to be self-centered.
God is about to pour out His anointing of covenant into this church because He’s got a plan for us, and He needs to establish a new framework of how we’re going to use the gifts in this Church. But if we use the gifts in this Church, we are certainly going to face a situation where somebody’s going to say something that you don’t like and it might touch where your gift is supreme. “So, you want to tell me what I must do with my gift when my gift knows I’ve got to do something else? “For the moment, yes.” I wonder what God’s up to here. Maybe it just could be He’s testing a heart.
God wanted me to demonstrate to you that when He puts a messenger in your life, He holds me accountable to hear from Him that if I need to say anything to you, then I will do it, whether it’s from this pulpit or in private. I don’t get up here every Sunday and start prophesying, and I don’t start calling people out and giving words for their life and prophesy and then this whole church is built on my ability to be operating in the gifts of the Spirit and prophesying. Even the Apostle Paul never built the church based on the gifts of the Spirit. He started churches based on the Word of God, based on the leading of the Holy Spirit, based on covenant. If the gifts of the Spirit operated, so be it.
God is a God of restoration and He’s a God of good things. There’s an order of marriage that God has brought into this church; everybody that gets married under this order will have all of the blessings. Where there’s a proper order in the ecclesia of the church and the gifts and the callings are operating in their proper order, the anointing is there for everybody to achieve the things that God has called them to do, destined to do. I’m telling you, the young people in this church, they’ve got a good life ahead of them. If they just obey God and they keep stuck and they keep going and keep doing what God tells them to do, it’s good stuff. And you older people, you’re not too old to make your marriage good.
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