Scripture reference: 1 Thessalonians 5:23 (NLT); John 4:23-24 (NLT), John 4:13-15 (NLT), John 4:32-38 (NLT); 1 Corinthians 15:45-50 (TPT)
Pastor John: Hallelujah. Thank you. Thank you. Hallelujah. Do you know there are many, many, many people, myself included, that can play a musical instrument. I mean, you can play a guitar, you can maybe play a little bit of a piano, you know, you can do some things. You can play a mouth organ. There’s many, many, many people around the world that can play a musical instrument, and then you can have people that can play a musical instrument quite well, and they can maybe be part of a church group, and they can do a few things. They can keep a tune, they can keep a rhythm, they can do things, and they can play together as a band. Then you can have musicians that play like them, and I’m not just talking to applaud them, although I do applaud you, all of you. But, I’m wanting to make a spiritual point to you today. Okay?
So, I’m just going to ask them to do a one-minute riff, just a one-minute riff. Just go for it whatever you guys want to do, just pick a chord and do a one-minute riff. [Band playing a riff]. So, what do you think it takes to play like that? I mean, it doesn’t matter how much talent they have. Right? I mean, they might have grown up with a real natural ear for music, whatever, but they had to practice. They had to learn. But there’s people that can play an instrument, any kind of instrument, and then they look at these guys and they say, “Wow.” And then they pick up their guitar.
My grandson, Jeduthun, turns out he bought himself a little plastic guitar because he heard Nick and he wanted to play rock guitar like Nick. And so, he tightened the one plastic thing. He tightened and it snapped his guitar.
Yeah, and it’s like, you know, I was with him this weekend, we were celebrating Pastor Sharon’s birthday. And he was like, sitting talking to me, he says, “Grandpa, I want a guitar that can play rock.” I said, “You want a guitar that can play rock or you want to play rock?” So, he did not quite understand the difference, he says, “I want a guitar that can play rock.” You know, if it were only that easy, that I could just buy a guitar and say, “Play me rock and let’s do this thing.” But that is not the way it works, right? You have got to have a guitar, you’ve got to have drums, you’ve got to have a piano, you’ve got to have percussion instruments and you’ve got to practice. You’ve got to have your ear, and for you to go from I’ve got an instrument to playing like this can be years.
You know in the Christian life we want to read the Bible a few times and now we want to be mature Christians that get all our prayers answered overnight. Well, we are all Christians, we all have an instrument that is called our mouth and we can all do that, so we can all have our victories, né? It doesn’t work like that. You can all play the instrument, but to play it like this as a Christian you have got to have a lot of practice time. You have got to have training, you have got to give yourself a lot of time to get to this level. Now, the reason I asked them just to play a riff, just like that is because it takes a lot of skill and a lot of understanding music and each other to just, like that, just play it, you know? I mean to play a structured song is one thing, but to all just get together, vibe together, do it off the cuff is a whole different ball game.
That’s a thing with Christians, you know? You can be believing God for something, believing God for something, believing God for something, but when the crisis hits you, you have got to be able to play, just play in the crisis so that what comes out of your heart becomes the answer to your problem and you are skilled enough, trained enough that you can just do it. Hallelujah. So, you became my object lesson today [Points to the band]. Thank you, you can go, and sit down, thank you. Give them a hand everybody, come on. [Congregation applauds the band] Hallelujah. You may be seated too, thank you.
Jeduthen wants a guitar that can play rock like Nick. He wants to play like Nick, I want to play like Nick too. I want to like Denholm and Nick. It’s not going to happen. I don’t have time to practice that much. Hallelujah.
Alright, I want to just quickly before we go into the Message, I want to just share something with you. We have a plan here in the ministry, and we are focusing on – we’re going to call it a ‘People Care Movement.’ Alright. A ‘People Care Movement.’ So, People Care is a part of the Ministry designed to serve and support the needs of our church community and Ekklesia. The team’s focus is to develop and maintain an ongoing communication and touch system where everyone who connects with our ministry or who is part of our ministry is served well and in a relational way.
So, the People Care team is here to do the following: They’re here to respond to your requests and questions; offer prayer or provide a guideline to where you can get support for whatever you need support for; remain in touch with the church community in a way that reflects the heart of our ministry; and identify and address the unique needs of the people within our church community.
So, the heart of the People Care team is to facilitate the journey of new believers as they integrate themselves with God’s ways and with the church community. We want to create a space where people are able to embrace a life of faith within our church community and Ekklesia, and the knowledge that there is strength in the unity of believers, and that they don’t have to try and grow on their own. Are you all getting this so far? We want to have necessary support in place for everyone who is integrating with the church community so they are able to get to a point of firm foundation in their walk with God.
The goal is to convey the Father’s heart of having a strong relationship with Him and with your family and our family – the blood-bought and the blood-born families. This team is a channel through which people are loved, protected, and welcomed into the church community, regardless of who they are or who they were with. So, we are in the process of training and working on our team, for our team and anyone that would want to serve newcomers in our church community. We’ll have training workshops to ensure that the team is equipped to serve everyone wholeheartedly. This will make room to refine our processes, expand our care plans, and ensure follow-ups for everyone we serve. This will strengthen our Ministry with better support, open communication, and focus on helping people find their place.
So, going forward, we are going to touch more people, more people are going to get saved, and more people are going to get loved. Amen. We’re going to invest more energy into inviting people to the services and have space to acknowledge, welcome, and serve newcomers. We’re establishing an integration team whose primary focus will be on welcoming new visitors to the church and helping them integrate into our community.
We’re establishing an integration team whose primary focus will be on welcoming new visitors to the church and helping them integrate into our community. This is going to happen all the time. It’s not just going to happen on Sunday nights or any other time. This is going to be part of an ethos that we are developing in our church. Newcomers will feel valued and connected even among the already strong, established relationships within the church.
We have identified a few things. One of the things is that because we are such a strong church that has such strong relationships, it’s not always easy for people to come here and just feel like they belong. So, we have to become conscious of what we do when we see someone else who’s not normally here, and what we do with them, and how we treat them. Amen. So, the integration team will serve as a bridge, helping new attendees find their place, build meaningful connections, and feel at home in our church family.
What we want to do is, we’re going to just talk to you more about that on the 23rd of March, I believe it is. We’re going to share some more things with you, and we’re actually going to launch elements of this ‘People Care Program’, or the ‘People Care Movement.’ We’re going to launch those elements to you in March because we want to do something and be something that is aware of the people that are coming to church. Amen. So, for the time being, because we did an evaluation of our readiness as a church for Sunday nights to have Sunday night evangelistic meetings, we realised our church, even though we’re doing Sunday night services, our church is not ready, because we don’t have the necessary infrastructure in place.
So, we are going to have the music team here on Sunday mornings again. For the time being, we’re going to start focusing on what it takes to become a full-care movement church. So, to us, it doesn’t matter if we’re having a healing service, it doesn’t matter if we’re having Holy Ghost meetings, it doesn’t matter what kind of church service we’re having, when we’re having it. We are going to be a full-care church so that everybody feels welcome, everybody knows what to do next, how to do it next, and we’ve got some wonderful plans, and some wonderful things that we’re wanting to implement. So, for the moment, for the month of March, we are going to have Sunday evenings, we’re going to go back to having message moments.
Because what we’re going to do is, in the short term, once a month, we’re going to have a Sunday that is dedicated to salvations. One Sunday a month, but we are going to have a full-care church all the time. Amen. This is not only going to improve what we do with newcomers and with people that get saved, but it’s also going to improve our relationships so that we have a more structured way of making sure that needs get met and that people are contacted, and we don’t go for a couple of weeks and I’m not sure whether someone is alive or not. Amen. Praise the Lord. You’re all good with that? Yes. Praise Jesus.
So, we are making sure, the idea and the plan is that we will focus on one Sunday, and then as the time goes by, every Sunday night will eventually, and we might then move from two Sundays to two Sunday nights to three Sunday nights or to, and then a full every night every Sunday night, we will become a church that is focused on salvations and leading people to the Lord on Sunday night. But we want to make sure that our whole ministry is a People Care Ministry. Amen.
I’m glad that we found out there are some things that we are lacking and some things that we are not ready for, and we need to be ready, so we’ve got a full plan. I’m trusting that all of our, and we have done a lot of work. A lot of this stuff is in place already, but there are still some things we’ve got to do better at, and we should be done with that by the 23rd of March. Amen. Are you ready for the Word today? Praise the Lord. Thank You, Jesus.
Saturday morning, I had a dream. I am not going to tell you the whole dream because it would take too long, and it’s not my intention to share all of the contents of the dream. But I woke up from my dream, and I immediately was praising the Lord. I was calling on the name of Jesus. Actually, I should be more clear about that, I was calling on the name of Jesus as I woke up because I was immediately aware that this dream I had, had some really amazing significance. We were not in town. We were away, and we were celebrating Pastor Sharon’s birthday. When we were having green tea together, a little bit later when we were having some green tea together, we were sitting and looking out on a beautiful mountain view. I just wanted to share the dream with Pastor Sharon. I’m going to just give you the experience of the dream more than what happened in the dream.
When I woke up, I had this great, great sense of loss, a great sense of loss because of what transpired in the dream. I realised that there are, as I began to work through the dream with Pastor Sharon and later on in the day, I became aware of some things that, I believe the Lord wanted me to see from the dream. But essentially, the dream was about: Sharon was not with me, and I didn’t know where she was. There was no way of me communicating with her.
I had no fear, I had no panic, I had no anxiety, I had no negative emotions, but I was aware that I didn’t know where she was, and no one around me knew where she was. And so, I had this great sense of helplessness actually that, how do I find her? How do I find her?
And the dream was essentially about, I don’t know how, but I got connected to a man, and eventually, this man gave me some information that connected me to another man and a group of people, and I never felt like I had to push for anything. I never felt like I had to go and frantically go and try and find her. I was just being… as the next thing presented itself, I did that. As the next thing presented itself, I did that. And then it wasn’t very long, and a group of people told me, “No. She’s just been here, and she’s gone to another place.”
The way I can describe it to you, it would be like she was here, and she went to Joburg. Well, it would be nice to know she’s in Joburg, but where do I look for her in Joburg? Right? And so, I went from where I was in the dream to where she was. And when I arrived at that place, I walked straight to her. I found her. And we had a few words, just some, but it was the most amazing thing is, like, as I came to her, I knew everything that she had been through. She had no words to say to me. There wasn’t any communication required. It was like as I arrived in her presence, I knew everything she had been through. No explanation required. I could immediately flow with her. I picked up all of the experiences that she had. I picked it up supernaturally. I knew exactly everything, all the emotions, everything, everything, everything. It was like what she was, was duplicated in me. There was no distance between us. Quite something, hey.
Well, you know, the more I began to ask the Lord and meditate on what I needed to see, the first thing I tell you is that I had this great loss, in the whole dream, I had this great loss that she was on this journey, that I was not part of and that she was missing and I couldn’t find her. So, there was this great loss that I was feeling, and this loss was almost overwhelming to me in my dream. But as I came into her presence, the entire journey that she had just been through became my journey. It was an immediate catch-up. Instantaneously, there was no difference between us.
Later on, as I began to understand a little bit more, I really saw how God showed me that if you don’t have the emotions or you don’t allow the emotions of your soul to control your actions, but trust completely in God, the way that you solve problems is completely different to the way that you solve problems through your soul. Because you’re not looking to take responsibility to solve a problem. You’re looking to hear from God, so that God shows you what’s next. That might not solve the problem, but if you follow God with what’s next, you will eventually solve the problem. But you will solve it in such a way that there is no time lost, and nothing will be missing and nothing will be broken. Even though it might seem like everything has changed, God makes everything right immediately, immediately.
So, you know, in recent times, you wouldn’t know about this, but, really, the enemy of God through people really tried to steal all of our legacy – all of our legacy. Everything that God placed me in a position to be with Brother Jerry, to be with all of the things, the devil really tried to use people to discredit me, discredit us, and steal our legacy. This was a real threat. The enemy truly threatened to try and take it all.
At that time, I felt the Lord lead me to say, “I forgive them, I bless them, I pray for them, and I love them.” But at the same time, the Lord required me to hold up a standard of justice so that His justice would be done. The end result of it is that not only did that scheme and that plot of the enemy, that was working through people, not only did it fail, but God reestablished the legacy and the inheritance in a stronger way than we had before. That’s always the case. So, I can tell you I was not anxious. I had moments where I was mentally under pressure, but I determined that I was not going to defend myself, and I was not going to try and make phone calls and try and do lots of things to try and control the narrative. All I did was obey the Lord. Hallelujah.
So, here’s what the Lord showed me. He said, “You cannot stop the devil from trying to separate you”. That’s what happened with me and Sharon. In my dream, we were separated, and you might feel a great sense of loss because there’s things happening in a journey that, “Why am I not part of this journey? Why am I not able to experience the stuff that is going on?”. But if you obey God, then things will happen. Circumstances will happen, and in your obedience, God not only brings you back to where you belong, but He will make up everything so that you understand everything and more instantaneously. He restores things. There is a big difference in trying to solve life problems with your soul and trying to solve life problems with your spirit. Hallelujah.
Over the last weeks, I’ve been sharing this with you. My foundation scripture, Pastor Sharon reminded everybody in the Tuesday night prayer one night, “I’m going to remind pastor John you must speak about his foundation scripture”. So, here I am. One Thessalonians five twenty three, 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 the Lord Jesus Christ comes again” (1 Thessalonians 5:23 NLT).
So, what I’ve said to you is, that which is of the spirit makes us conscious of God. It helps us relate to God. That which is of the soul helps us relate to ourselves, otherwise, you might say “self-consciousness.” That which is of the body, connects you to the world through your senses. So, we are body, and we are soul, and we are spirit. This is a Bible thing. This is not just a psychology thing.
John chapter four verse 23 says, 23 But the time is coming…”.Oh, I didn’t put my alarm on here. Timer, I’ll have to take a bit of time off here. 23 But the time is coming, indeed, it is here now when true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth. How are we supposed to worship the Father? In spirit and in truth. Yes? In spirit. 23… The Father is looking for those who will worship him that way. 24 For God is Spirit, and so those who worship him must worship Him in spirit and in truth. (John 4:23-24 NLT) So, God is Spirit. The reason why we have to worship God in spirit and in truth, well because there can never ever be any measure of lie that comes near Him. The Bible says that in Him, there is no shadow of turning, and there is no variableness. He’s the same yesterday, today, and forever, which means there can never exist in God a lie. There can never be any untruth in God. So, if we are going to worship Him, we must worship Him as spirits because He is a Spirit, and those who worship Him in spirit can only worship Him in truth because if you’re worshipping the true God with your spirit, then everything you must do must be in spirit and truth. Amen.
So, what happens if you worship God with untruth? Well, what untruth could you be worshipping God with? You could be worshipping God from an incorrect Bible view of God. So, let’s use an example. If I go to God and I say, “God, please don’t make me sick. I want to worship You for not making me sick.” Well, that’s not truth. You may be worshipping the same God as I’m worshipping, but because you’re not worshipping Him in truth, you may still be worshipping Him from spirit, but there’s no truth in your worship. So, what will you do when you worship like that? If you now get sick, you have to give God the credit for making you sick.
Now, this confuses your soul, not your spirit, because your spirit has truth, but your soul will be confused. So, what happens when you have a confused soul? If you have a confused soul, then you don’t really know what truth is. You’re going to worship God with emotion. You’re going to worship God with feelings. You’re going to worship God with words that you choose to be the words that you want to speak with Him, the attitudes that you want to have with God.
I remember there was a guy at Rhema who was a famous actor. He’s long since gone to be with the Lord, and he got saved because of this action, but his life was turning out really badly, and he wanted to prove that God didn’t exist. And he took a shotgun, and he went out to the heavens, and he shot the shotgun at God and told God, “You’re not real, but if you are real, then do something.” And so, God did do something and got him saved, and he became such a passionate person about evangelizing. He would drive around all of Johannesburg all the days of his life. He had a car, then he had a coffin on the car, and the coffin had “Turn or burn” on the one side. On the other side, it said, “Draai of braai”. His name was Don Leonard, and he was so passionate about getting people saved that he would drive around Johannesburg with his window open and hold his Bible outside, not to mention the fact that he had the coffin on the car, that wasn’t enough. He had to drive with one hand on the steering wheel and a Bible outside of his hand like this [Pastor John demonstrates how this looked], and wherever he went, he would shout to people to get saved.
You know, occasionally, Sharon and I would be doing our business, like a family would go shopping in a supermarket, and every now and again, we’d bump into Don. And then we tried to find a way out of there before he saw us. “Hey, John.” From across the whole shopping centre, “Hey, John! Hey, Jesus is Lord! Don’t you love Jesus, John? John! The Sharon! Hey!” [Pastor John demonstrates how Don would shout this.] Me? No. [Pastor John turning around and walking away] I mean, I’m just being real with you. In that moment, we were not thinking about getting anybody saved. We were just buying, you know, milk and eggs, you know. And then suddenly, Don is like, “Hey, John and Sharon! Jesus, Jesus, Jesus!” And the whole shopping centre just stops and looks. And who’s he talking to, you know? And eventually, we realized, actually, Don’s always going to be this way, and so, okay, let’s join in. You know, we had to get over ourselves. I’m just saying.
You know, God is truth. God is truth, and God is a spirit, and those who worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth. Hallelujah. You know, when Jesus made this scripture — when He made the statement, “For God is Spirit, so those who worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth” — you know, I know that I can’t be true to everything. I don’t have the fullness of truth in me. So, there might be times when I’m communicating with God when my communication is not full truth, but I know enough so that my spirit would correct me. Your soul doesn’t have what it takes to correct you because your soul is emotion, and your soul is your intellect, and your soul is based on the whole of your experiences. But your spirit is where the Word of God lives. Your spirit is where the Holy Spirit lives. Your spirit is the life where God can correct you. So, what you feed your spirit then will allow your spirit to correct you into your soul.
When Jesus made the statement, He was talking to a woman who came at midday to a well to draw water. I’m not going to focus on the whole story here, but she was there at midday because she had a bad reputation. She was not well received in the city. She’d been around men a lot, and she had that reputation. But she came there, and Jesus spoke to her and said, “Give Me water.” Now, He was breaking cultural norms by even speaking to her. Not just as a man, but as a Jewish man, He was speaking to a Samaritan. That was just not acceptable, but Jesus didn’t care about cultural norms or social norms. He was only interested in the will of His Father, which means that if He was following what His soul and His learning told Him, He wouldn’t have obeyed what His spirit was telling Him. His spirit was directing Him against the culture and social norms of the day. Amen.
So, the reason He got to those who worship Me in spirit is because He had been talking to her. So, I go back to verse 13. ¹³Jesus replied to her, “Anyone who drinks this water will soon become thirsty again… Please tell me. Please tell me. Will you work with me this morning? Please tell me, if He says, “Anyone who drinks this water will soon become thirsty again.” Where does thirst happen? In your body. And your body’s going to give signals to what part of your being? It’s your soul, your emotions, your intellect. Your brain power is going to tell you you’re thirsty. Your body needs water. So, your body is telling you signals, and now your soul is making you do something about it.
¹⁴But those who drink the water I give will never be thirsty again… He’s telling her, the signals you’re listening to are not the signals that are most important to you because you’re just focusing on what’s happening to my body, what’s happening to my soul, but that’s not the most important thing. The most important thing is for you to drink water that will never ever let you down. It becomes this water, you will 14…never be thirsty again. It becomes a fresh, bubbling spring within them, you, giving you eternal life. ¹⁵“Please, sir,” the woman said, “give me this water! Then I’ll never be thirsty again, and I won’t have to come here to get water.”(John 4:13-15 NLT) Do you see? She’s confused.
Jesus is speaking to her spirit for eternity. She interprets an eternal message through her experiences and her physical world. Her interpretation is completely incorrect because she’s interpreting it through her senses and her soul, but the truth of what Jesus is saying to her does not change. How you interpret God speaking to you has everything to do with the training of your soul and your body. Hallelujah.
So, when we talk to each other and we encourage each other to speak the Word of God and not get into criticism, not get into judgment of each other, not get into bad words, and trying to bad mouth each other, and politic around each other, and try and run other people down and have sarcastic remarks about people that kind of make them look inferior to you. You know what we’re trying to do is to prevent you from training your soul so that when God speaks to you, you don’t have a confused place where God can speak to you. This is probably the biggest part that we as spiritual leaders play in your life because most people, it’s like I got talking about the musicians this morning. Everybody’s a Christian. Everybody can play a musical instrument, but to go from being a Christian to playing music like this takes a whole different ball game.
People get saved, they come to church, they hear the Word every Sunday, and then they want to make life decisions, but they’ve confused their soul with a whole lot of learning, with a whole lot of experiences, with a whole lot of words, with a whole lot of fears, anxieties, troubles, things that have come to them. They have all of the stuff that they are living in this world by, trying to control your world, trying to be responsible for your world, trying to take, you know, responsibility and take ownership of things that you have or haven’t done in your life. Come on. All of these things are impacting your decision making, your own direction for your life. So, the advantage of being in a church where we are all following God’s message is that we can come to each other and say, “Pray with me. What does the Bible say to you? What is the wisdom that you’re getting from the Lord? What is your learning and your wisdom say about this matter?” We’re not trying to control your decisions. On the contrary, we’re trying to help you make decisions so that your soul is not confused by what truth God wants you to live by.
The Western Democratic World Society says, “I don’t need anybody’s advice. I don’t need anybody’s counsel about what I must do with my life. I’m well capable of making my own decisions and doing my own thing about life, and no one needs to tell me.” The worst kind of Christian is the kind of Christian who’s been in church for fifteen years, and they think they know enough, and they’re responsible people, and they’ve done reasonably well in life, and now they want to come and say, “You want to tell me how I must live my life? Look how good my life is.” It doesn’t mean their souls are not confused because Jesus was making a clear distinction here, those who worship Him must worship Him in Spirit. And so, most Christians think that they’re actually quite spiritual because they have a lot of knowledge about church and about the Bible. And because they have knowledge, they think the knowledge is what will get them through it, but it is not knowledge that gets you there. I’ve preached this long enough so you know what the answer is. The knowledge you need is revealed knowledge. It’s revelation knowledge. When you have a revelation of knowledge, that thing changes your life forever.
I know there are some people in here that God has revealed to you what it is to be planted in a church. If you don’t have that revelation, how are you going to see church? Well, you’re going to say, “Church is a congregation. It’s where I congregate, and I come to church, and I have friends in church, and I like what’s going on in church,” but if you don’t have an understanding and a revelation of what planted is, then it doesn’t matter. When a circumstance comes in your life that can give you another option, you’ll take it because you don’t have a revelation of planted. How can I give you a revelation of planted? I can only tell you what planted is, but unless God reveals planted to you, you can never understand what planted is. You see, you can have knowledge, but you don’t necessarily have truth. Those who worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth, not spirit and knowledge.
That’s why I said to you before, if I wanted to be a motivational speaker and I wanted to start charging people for motivational speaking. Come on, work with me now. If I’ve got this pastoral shepherding gift in me and I’m a good communicator, I’ve said this to you before, and I was successful in business, and I have a successful marriage, and I have a successful family life, and I’ve got successful relationships. Who would not want to pay big money to come and hear me? All I’ve got to do is sit down long enough to write a couple of books, then I’m an author, I’m a motivational speaker. Watch me make money. At that point, I can speak things to your soul that are based on truth, but they are not truth. They’re just knowledge of truth. The knowledge of truth doesn’t make anything truth to you. Jesus, the Father and the Holy Spirit are Spirit, and They live as spirit beings in you, and we must worship Them in spirit and in truth. Now, I’m going to go back and say to you, I’m not trying to downplay the power of what you can train your soul to be. Listen, if you train your soul enough, your soul is a powerful, powerful, powerful force on the earth, and you can really do a lot of work on your soul to make your soul make you very, very successful.
There are some things that, by the Spirit of God, He is going to teach you that are spirit life impartations that will work itself through your soul. But then it’s God working through you, to your soul, not you developing patterns of the soul that you now think is God. You know, what I’m telling you now took me many, many years to figure this out. It took me a long, long time of getting before God to find out what this is.
Because, if you read the book of James, the book of James says that out of the same water of life can flow two forces. The one force can be evil and the other force can be good. The book of James says, “This should not be the case where out of the same source both types of life can flow.” The Bible tells us that we must guard our spirit because out of the spirit flows all of the issues of your life.
If I take a Bible truth and I apply the Bible truth. I’m going to use an example for you now. You might not like it, but this is truth. If I take a Bible truth, and I’m going to use the truth as generosity. If I’m a generous person, I’m going to just use an example because I’ve now taken over Pastor Sharon’s model, and she helped me. I carry lots of notes now. She gets notes for me from the bank, and I carry them in my car. Wherever I go, I’m giving people… She taught me this. She actually takes the time to go to the bank. You know, for you and me, the way I’ve lived most of my life is, if I’ve got some spare notes in my thing, then I’ll give it. If I have, perchance. Then I had an even bigger excuse, in my own mind, because now I pay everything with my phone. I don’t have to carry money. So, how are you going to give someone something in the car park? Watch this now. Just watch this.
If this is not coming from my God knowledge, but it’s coming from a knowledge of the principles of God, and I become a generous person. Wherever I go, I’m giving people, and when my servant works at home, when I have people at work that we work together, and I’m the owner of the business, and I pay generous salaries, I pay generous people, and I’m generous wherever I go, what is going to happen to my world? My whole world, my soul is going to let me have a mindset of generosity. Now wherever I’m going, I’m going to see the world through that filter. So, now people’s problems don’t, you know, I don’t walk through my life saying, “Don’t make your problems mine.” You know? I’d go through the world saying, “I see a problem. It’s there for me to help solve it.”
You know, I mean, Sharon and I were talking about it. We had a moment while we were away, and we just had a moment, and we were talking about people that will give to foundations, charity work. They will give work… Because we had a situation where we’re at where we found out there’s an epilepsy centre there, and these people were raising money, and it seemed like they already raised R300,000 for this centre. And we were just having a chat about it, and I said, “Isn’t it amazing that there are people that will actually find a cause and make it their cause, and they will go and raise money to go and give to that cause?” I said, “But I want to…” We were having a conversation. I said, “But I want to show you something, Sharon. This is a worthy cause, and it’s wonderful.” And this man that was raising money, he was a Christian, and I don’t know what all the other reasons why, but we had a wonderful sharing moment with him. You know? Wonderful guy.
But, I said, “But just notice this, Sharon, that it’s a worthy cause to give to. But as we move through life, we give people R20, R30, R50, R100…” I mean, it’s just like a thing… You know, Sharon has one person at this store that comes and wants to put her bags in the car, and she hauls out a note. And then there’s a guy who’s the car attendant, and she hauls out a note. And then there’s another person who’s just taking the trolleys back and forward, and she’ll haul out another note. So, guess what happens when Sharon arrives at the shops? Everybody wants to help her. She never withholds it because she doesn’t see it as a problem that these people are always looking for money. She sees it as the right thing that God’s given me enough that I can distribute.
So, I’ve told you this before, but I want to show you how God uses things like this. When there was a situation that happened where two guys wanted to rob an old man at the ATM, and Sharon bungled into; just happened in on the scene because she was going to draw money to do this kind of thing, the people that see her every time in that parking lot, they came to intervene to try and draw her out of that situation. Generosity can save your life even if you don’t know and think and see. I’m trying to say, we have generosity because we’ve received the Spirit of truth about it.
The truth of it is not that, “These guys, they’re going to just go and waste it on booze”, or “Someone else will give it to them.” I mean, we sat and watched where a situation enveloped where people were driving in their wealthy big SUV cars. And we watched; one by one these people left the parking area; they never gave any tip to anybody that was watching their cars. They just didn’t. And Sharon was like, “I want to go chase those people down and go and beat them and say, ‘What do you… Why? Why are you so stingy? You drive your biggest car, you’ve come for a weekend, you’ve come to this most amazing place that you’re going to sit, and you can’t give R10 to a guy who’s looking after your car.’”
You see, you can have knowledge, but if you don’t have revelation about that, you won’t know what to do next. You will always have this mentality, “It’s my money and I’m not going to give.” But there are people out there that are generous. Do you wonder why people talk about the Jews? Why they’re so blessed and why they’re so wealthy? Do you know, that’s a real thing. Do you know why? Because in the Bible, it says you’ve got to be generous to your neighbours. So, what did the Jews do? They live with generosity. So, what comes to them? Blessing. God’s generosity overtakes them. They live with the truth of that revelation.
So, I can take that knowledge and I can use it in my life and say, “I’m going to be generous now. I’m going to be giving to institutions and I’m going to be generous,” and you can act on it, and the principle of that will work for you. Can I tell you what will happen? You’ll get business contracts that other people will say, “How did you get it?” You’ll meet people that you say, “How did I bump into that person? How did we get talking about this? How did we do that?”
You might not even recognise much of the blessing that’s on your life because actually, you think that the way you live your life has created it. Meanwhile, if you understand the giving… I mean, tithing works like that. If you’re a tither, you might just go about life and say, “My life is good, and things are happening, and everything is good in my life,” and you don’t credit tithing for it, you think it’s because you’re smart, you make all the right decisions, you’re doing everything right. Meantime, the covenant of God is working for you all the time. That’s spirit life. That’s not soul life. That’s spirit truth. Hallelujah.
You want me to tell you a bit more? Here, John chapter 4 verse 32, the disciples come back from the town, and Jesus answered them. They said, “Have you eaten anything, Jesus?” Watch. 32 But Jesus replied, “I have a kind of food you know nothing about.” What are you talking? Now He’s talking about water that you’ll never thirst. Now He’s talking to a different group of people. Now You’re eating food that you know not what? So, they go from spirit truth, eternal truth to only what they know in their soul.
33 “Did someone bring him food while we were gone?” the disciples asked each other. 34 Then Jesus explained: “My nourishment comes from doing the will of God, who sent me, and from finishing his work. 35 You know the saying, ‘Four months between planting and harvest.’ But I say, wake up and look around. The fields are already ripe for harvest. 36 The harvesters are paid good wages, and the fruit they harvest is people brought to eternal life. (John 4:32-36 NLT]).
Do you get what He’s saying here? The harvesters are paid. Who’s he talking about? He’s taking a natural soul example and he’s talking about a spirit life. If you give your life to the will of the Father and doing the work that He sent you to do, the wages are good. 36 The harvesters are paid good wages, and the fruit they harvest is people brought to eternal life. What joy awaits both the planter and the harvester alike! 37 You know the saying, ‘One plants and another harvests.’ And it’s true. 38 I sent you to harvest where you didn’t plant; others had already done the work, and now you will get to gather the harvest.” (John 4:36-38 NLT).
You know, I’ve had this so many times in my life where people are praying for God to bless them and for opportunities, and then a business opportunity presents itself and they say, “I fasted, I prayed, I did this. This must be of God.” And I say, “No, this is just a matter of you bumping into something someone else planted. Now it’s come a harvest. Now you want to give God the credit for bringing you to this point. That doesn’t make it the will of God just because you bumped into an opportunity.” There’s going to be harvests of opportunities wherever you look. The real thing about what you need to do is to have the wisdom of God to say, “Which one is going to be where the blessing lies for me?” Hallelujah. Praise Jesus. I’ve got a lot to share about that in business and finance, but not today. Not today. And so, as I’ve said to you, I will preach in time to come.
I just felt of the Lord, I’ve got to just make sure this foundation is strong. Because as I go through this, you’re going to start to identify the stuff that comes from your soul versus the stuff that comes from your spirit. Now, remember what Kenneth Hagin said about a mature spiritual being, a mature spiritual being is a man who thinks and talks in line with his spirit. Not talks and thinks in line with his soul, talks and thinks in line with his spirit because who lives in your spirit? Jesus. And so, how do you get a strong spirit? You feed it. With what? Worship, the Word, speaking in tongues, the things that are spirit life activities. That’s how you grow your spirit. So, when you get mature enough, you start to evaluate everything.
I had to repent. I had to repent of the Lord this weekend. I just have this amazing, wonderful walk with God, and I don’t mind sharing my walk with God with you because if you can learn something from me without having to pay the whole price that I paid, I’m very happy for it. I can think like a lawyer. It’s part of something that the Lord has done for me. I know lots of you can do this too, it’s not just unique to me, but I like to do this and it’s something that I… So, if you have a point of view, you come from it from… “So, what if this person says this about this? What if this person thinks this? What if this argument is like that? And what about this argument?” All about the same point. Right? If you can create those kinds of arguments in your head, then you hope you are going to look at the problem from all angles. Yes? You’ll know what I’m talking about. Most of the time, the way that you deal with that, and we may all deal with that, is ‘What if.’ What if that had to happen? What if this happens? What if this happens? So, you deal with all the ‘what ifs’ to try and see if you can come to a solution. So, just by the way, a ‘what if’ set of thinking is about the intellect and the soul. None of it is about the spirit. Just by the way.
But I was having a conversation with Sharon, and I said this, “If I was in that situation, I would do this, and I would do that, and I wouldn’t do this”, and I was referring to some people. It sounded quite innocent. Then later on, I was by myself and the Lord said to me, “You have to stop that right now, John. I do not want you ever doing that again.” I said, “Say again, Lord.” He said, “What you just did was you took the creative power of your soul and because your words, you know your words are so powerful, you projected a scenario into someone else’s life, and if they don’t even think like that, you’ve taken your words, put them into the atmosphere so that spirit beings can take those thoughts and give it to them and they might think those thoughts because of what you said even if they are thousands of miles away. Because of what you know as a revelation to the power of the words that you speak, you may not even engage in words of ‘what if.’”
I went straight to Pastor Sharon. I said, “My darling, I’ve come to repent to you, and if you ever hear me talking like this again, where we have to go through a conversation of ‘what if’, ‘what if’, ‘what if’, stop me. Because there’s a pattern and a habit, I’ve got to stop this. I can’t still keep thinking ‘what if.’” Sounds like I had a pretty good weekend with God. Don’t you think? Well, with the dream He gave me, then He’s talking to me about, “Shut your mouth, John. Don’t talk about ‘what if’ scenarios that relate to people.”
I mean, we might have a situation where we say, “Okay, we’re planning to go on a vacation or on a journey, and what if I run out of petrol? Different ‘what if’ question. It’s about practical stuff. But if I’m talking about what if I come here and I’m preaching to you and Pastor Christi doesn’t like what I’m preaching today and she gets all offended and she has this kind of reaction? What if that happens? What I’ve done is I’ve just projected a ‘what if’ possibility into the atmosphere that now she can actually get a hold of those words not because she hears me, but because some spirits heard me and they put those thoughts in her mind because I spoke the ‘what if’.
“What if my boss doesn’t like what I’m doing?” See, because I’ve got a pattern of soul. What is the pattern of my soul thinking, wanting to do? The pattern of my soul wants to control. I don’t want to bump into something that’s going to catch me off guard. I don’t want to find out I’m in a situation where somebody’s going to say something that surprises me or takes advantage of me, or I feel vulnerable, or I don’t feel protected enough, or I haven’t thought through all of the possibilities, so I’ve got all the answers for the situation that may or may not occur. You know what’s driving us? Anxiety, fear, cares of this world. My whole life becomes a ‘what if’. There’s no trust in God with this, that’s just about how smart I can be. Wow.
You know what? Hey, God set me free this weekend. Between the dream and Him talking to me, I realised just how much God delivered me this weekend because He showed me, “There are things going to happen in your life, John, that you don’t even know it’s going to happen, and people are going to be on journeys and you’re going to think, ‘Gee, I’m at a loss.’” And He said, “John, don’t worry. I can make up a time like this in the spirit. There is no time. There is no difference. There is no space. I can impart everything that is My knowledge to you in one split second of time, and you can catch up everything that you thought you ever missed out on. I can give it to you in a moment of time.” That’s the Spirit power. Hallelujah.
You know, I’ve got a few more minutes left here. Are you getting something out of this today? [Congregation replies, “Yes, Pastor John.”] Aren’t you glad that there’s this ministry that you can get about soul, and body, and spirit?
I mean, listen, some of this stuff I’ve been doing for a long time. I knew a long time ago, if I talk bad about my marriage, you know. I mean, I was in the corporate world. You’ve heard my story before and these guys will say, “You’re going home to your bag, to the old bag,” or “the hag,” or the one that always has something to say. I’ve never talked like that. I haven’t ever talked about Sharon like that. I’m not going to put that label on her. I’ve always known that those kinds of words are damaging. Why do I ever want to talk anything about that? She is the most gorgeous, sexiest, scintillating, spiritual, super woman in my life? If I talk like that, what am I going to get?
Now watch this. Thank You, Lord. I’m just flowing with the Holy Spirit here. Now watch this. I can learn the pattern of words. Even if I’m not a Christian, I can learn the pattern of words. And I can talk about any relationship and I can start talking positive words to a person. What am I going to get? Positivity. My words are going to change the way I have a relationship. It’s not based on revelation, it’s just based on the pattern of knowledge. I might say, “This really works, hey.” It’s not yet a revelation. It’s just a knowledge that this pattern works.
Can I tell you the pattern? Grobbies here has learned a very good pattern. He’s learned a pattern. If he gives a certain price for a certain car and he holds onto it for long enough, he’s got a pattern that if he does this, cleans the car, polishes the car, does some work on the car, he can buy it for a price, and then a couple of months later, he can use it for whatever he needs and then he can sell the car at a profit. He knows that if he does that often enough, the pattern works. The pattern might not change his life in terms of the way that he lives life. He just knows the pattern works.
So, if I’ve got a pattern of positive speaking about someone, I just know the pattern works. I can do the pattern, but I’m not giving God any credit for this. I’m just operating in the pattern. God doesn’t want to share His glory with the pattern. He wants the pattern to point to Him. Then when you get revelation of this, the glory becomes His because you won’t hear me talk about how my words created our marriage. What you’ll hear is that God revealed to me that words create our marriage, and I give glory to God for our marriage, not the pattern of my words. That’s the difference between soul and spirit. Spirit is a revelation from God. Soul is a learned pattern. Magtig maar dis goeie preek vandag, né.
So, again, I’m wanting to show you, there’s a lot of things you can do in pattern that can make you a powerful soul, and the world is full of powerful souls that live by patterns. But God wants to give us His life so that we live by revelation, not just by pattern. Hallelujah.
Watch this here, and I’ll finish with the scripture here, first Corinthians 15, verse 45, 45 For it is written: The first man, Adam, became a living soul. Do you see the word there? A living soul. Some translations say a living being, but I like the translation here because it’s living soul. The last Adam became the life-giving Spirit. So, Adam could not give us his spirit unless he procreated with Eve in the order of God’s glory. And in their procreation, they could have had another being which would have had the spirit of life of their being, but because they never procreated, they could never be a life-giving spirit. They could only be a life imparting soul.
So, 45…The last Adam became the life-giving Spirit. 46 However, the spiritual didn’t come first. The natural precedes the spiritual. 47 The first man was from the dust of the earth; the second Man is the Lord Jehovah, from the realm of heaven. 48 The first one, made from dust, has a race of people just like him, who are also made from dust. The One sent from heaven has a race of heavenly people who are just like him. 49 Once we carried the likeness of the man of dust, but now let us carry the likeness of the man of heaven. 50 Now, I tell you this, my brothers and sisters, flesh and blood are not able to inherit God’s kingdom realm, and neither will that which is decaying be able to inherit what is incorruptible (1 Corinthians 15:45-50 TPT).
So, this very clearly puts it for us that Adam could only give you so much. But when Jesus came to the earth, obviously, you have to have first what Adam gave you, a body and everything that comes with it. But the one who comes next, Jesus, is able to give you spiritual life. Now watch this. If you are only a being that exists on the earth without the spirit life of the second Adam, you can only live according to the rules of what the first Adam can give you and that’s everything that’s on the earth. You can have dominion. You can have authority. You can do everything that Adam and Eve could do because God didn’t give them a mandate only for them. He gave them a mandate for all humans to be created in the future. Only Jesus could come and give you spirit love. Then when you become the first Adam creature in the earth, then you can become the second Adam creature in Christ. Now you not only just live on the earth, you also have the Kingdom of God realm that becomes your playground.
Now, we are able to live in the God-dimension, the fourth dimension, the God-dimension. The challenge that you and I have, we have had, and will continue to have is that the system of this world, the culture, the social norms, the everything of this world is so influential, and we are so trained in these things. We are so trained in these things that it’s challenging for us to break free of it. Hallelujah.
I don’t want to leave you with the impression, and I trust that some of the examples I’ve shared with you today shows you how God has got to constantly deal with me in my own walk with God. With all of these years that are behind me and walking with God, I still find myself where God’s got to correct me. Hey? “John, don’t talk like that.” He was so strong on me this weekend. He was so strong. “I don’t ever want you to talk like that, John. You are creating things with your mouth that don’t need to be created. When you speak out of your mouth, speak only what I tell you to speak. Speak the Word of God. Do not speak ‘what if’ situations when it comes to people.” This is what He said to me even. He said, “John, if you speak ‘what if’ situations when it comes to finances, ‘what if’ situations, and you speak that out, don’t even think about it. Take it to Me. Let Me deal with the ‘what if’.”
So, I don’t want you to sit here thinking, I’ve got it all sorted. I’ve told you this before; I’ve got to live every day as a spirit being, by choice. You know my story about a rocket that gets taken up out of the earth. How 80% of the energy is used just to break free of the first two or three meters and then get free of the launch pad, and out of gravity. Most of the energy is used just breaking it freer and freer from gravity. But once it gets into orbit, it just needs a little [Pastor John makes fuel pumping noises] to keep it flowing around the orbit. Right? Because you’re free of gravity.
Well, that’s the same thing when you live by faith and when you live in the spirit. The amount of knowing, and the amount of energy and focus, and everything to get you free, out, so that you’re living in faith is immense. Because the pull of society, the pull of culture, the pull of emotions, the pull of the norms, the pull is so strong to keep you here. But you’ve got to have the fuel of the Word. You’ve got to have the fuel of His Spirit. You’ve got to have the fuel of the people of God around you so that it can pull you out of that gravitational orbit of the things that want to hold you on the earth. So, you can get free enough so you can just be with God. Hallelujah. Praise Jesus.
I like what Elon Musk has done. He’s got himself into a place where he can reuse a whole engine. You know? I mean, who else could bring an engine back into gravity? Resist all of the energy of gravity, and you have enough energy left over so that it could just be grabbed by that launch pad and bring it down again? I’ve got news for Elon Musk; as smart and genius as you are, once I get into the orbit of faith, I’m not coming back for no one. I don’t need the energy that’s going to pull me back into gravity. I’m going to just stay in the dimension of God, and I’m going to stay with words, and I’m going to stay in the spirit where the dimension of God becomes more and more my norm every day. Don’t you want to do that? Don’t you agree to that? Hallelujah.
Are you guys getting something out of this teaching? And as we go through it, you know, I’ll be teaching you more by the Spirit of God on how this applies to relationships, and finances, and different areas that we can live free and be free. Praise the Lord. Hallelujah. Won’t you all stand with me, please? Oh, I think I better take an offering. Yeah. Dankie, Empie. Shall we take up an offering, please? You probably better be seated again. Sorry for that.
I got taught in a ministerial school a long time ago, you’re never supposed to take an offering when people are standing because offering buckets go missing. Because when people are standing, it’s easier. There’s another reason they tell you. It’s not a reason I use, but they also say that people sit on their wallets. So, anyway, if you go to Bible school, sometimes there are things that come out that are different. Hallelujah. I thank God I didn’t go to cemetery. I went to the school of the living God who taught me about my gift and my calling. Praise Jesus.
So, just by the way, people that live that have got good values, they adopt good values because they’re based on the knowledge of God. Right? Values come from the knowledge of God. It doesn’t mean to say people have a revelation of God. They’re just living in the knowledge of values and principles that are from the way God has always been.
And by the way, farmers live like this every year. They wait for the season of planting, and they wait for the season of reaping, and they wait for the season of watering. It’s values and principles. You can’t have a harvest if you don’t work and plant your seed. You can’t have a harvest if you don’t go and reap the seed. You can’t have a harvest if you don’t do that, and there’s a season for everything. Those are God’s principles and values that He’s placed in the earth.
Willie de la Ray, is jy weer hierso? Magtig man, ek is bly. [Pastor John laughs] Won’t you stand with me again, please?
I want to tell you; Pastor Lynn is doing good. I know Willie and Charles are looking after him in Joburg. But he had a back operation, he’s back home, he came through the operation fine, he’s going to be resting for a couple of weeks, maybe a month or two. He’s probably watching us now. But we love you, Pastor Lynn, and we pray for your health and your restoration very quickly, in Jesus’ name. In Jesus’ name.
Won’t you just worship the Father? Father, we thank You for the opportunity to sow seed and to give You our tithes and our offerings. We bless You with our substance and our increase. We thank You that You bless us every day, every way, in so many things. We give You thanks and honour and praise for it, Lord, in Jesus’ name. Amen. Amen. Hallelujah.
And I pray that your week will be full of blessings. I want to encourage you, I want to encourage you; we’ve got 5 more days of morning prayer, let’s rush to the end. I wasn’t here Friday morning, but I was with you. I had a link, I was with you in prayer. We were with you in prayer on Friday morning because we were away, but we’ve got 5 more days. Let’s press. Let’s keep it going. I do believe the Lord is going to want us to do more. I don’t think we’re done yet. I’m not sure that it’s going to be every morning, but we’re going to find a way, by the wisdom of God, how we can do extra praying because I think we’ve got to keep pushing. What do you all say? Don’t you feel like we’ve got to keep pushing and we’ve got this thing going now, God is wanting us to keep pushing, keep pushing? Yes. Hallelujah. Praise the Lord.
I declare that you are ready and willing and able to obey God this week, every day the Spirit of God is strong upon you and He rises up strong inside of you and He will guide you and lead you. Wherever your feet go, there you’re going to prosper. Whatever you put your hands to, there you’re going to prosper. Whatever you come against, God is well able to deliver you and to protect you and to restore you in Jesus’ name. I pray that He will make up lost time. He will redeem time in whatever situation you find yourself, He will redeem the time for you, in Jesus’ name. In Jesus’ name. Hallelujah. No weapon formed against you will prosper. He gives His angels charge over you to make sure that no weapon formed against you prospers, no harm will come to you and He won’t let your foot get caught in a hidden snare. In Jesus’ name. He is a lamp unto your path and a light unto your feet. He is that to you this week. In Jesus’ name. In Jesus’ name. May the peace of God rest upon you, protect you and guide you. Nothing missing. Nothing broken. In Jesus’ name. We’ll see you at 5 o’clock. Message Moments. Is it not today? I’ll see you 5 o’clock any which way. Bye.
© 2024 – Heritage of Faith Ministries International
TOUCH | TEACH | TRAIN | TRANSFER
