Scripture Reference: Ruth 1:8-22 (NKJV); Ruth 2:2-3 (NKJV); Ruth 2:4-12 (NKJV)
Praise the Lord, hallelujah. I thank God that we are His beloved and He is our beloved. And we have got a great love relationship happening between us, God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Hallelujah. It’s a wonderful place to be, it’s a great place to live. I wouldn’t want to live any other way, really, is the most satisfying life to have to live this way. Hallelujah. Will you agree with me that my mind, my body, and all of my being is submitted to the Holy Spirit. And that the words that come out of this vessel will be by the Holy Spirit. It will be for the glory and the honour of Jesus and the honour and the glory of the Heavenly Father. And it is my desire to be used as a 100% complete instrument of God. So that everything that is said, and everything that you receive is by the Holy Spirit. Hallelujah. Glory to God. Amen. You may be seated, thank you.
Glory to God. I’ve been speaking about My Beloved. And I’ve been speaking about that there is a special place, a special relationship that happens between somebody that is beloved and certainly we have that special relationship with God. I’ve been speaking about how honour and beloved are so closely connected together, that when you are beloved, and you have honour, it’s some of the most liberating and most powerful ways to live in your life. Because you don’t live for yourself you live with a completely different worldview, of how you see other people and how you see God. And it causes you to want to have a God worldview rather than your own worldview. And this is the most important thing that we can strive to have is a God worldview rather than our own worldview. Praise the Lord.
And so I can’t go back on ministering the whole weekend. What I, Pastor Sharon, and I have ministered this weekend. So you just gonna have to get what we said yesterday. Because I went into some detail about Martha and Mary. And the difference between if you’re a Martha, I declared and I said, based on the Scripture, you’re distracted by many things, you’re just wanting to serve. You are all about doing things, doing stuff, getting life done. And I spoke about how Martha came to Jesus, and said, Lord, don’t You care that she has abandoned her responsibilities to sit at Your feet, tell her to come and help me serve. And God said, one thing that can’t be taken away from her, she has discovered. And so He never sent her away, in fact, Martha was the one that was lovingly rebuked. Not because of that she was in any way doing wrong, but she had chosen to live in a way that was not permanent.
She was living in a changing condition, changing society, changing culture. And she would always be subject to that culture because that’s the way she chose to live. Whereas Mary chose to sit at the feet of Jesus and became a disciple of what she heard. And so even though they were all these society, and cultural pressures, this is the biggest moment of their life, in a home where the most important guests that would ever come and visit your house, she chose to abandon her responsibilities, and sit at the feet of Jesus. And in that moment the difference between the two sisters was discovered. One was more, was more caring about the natural things of life, and the other one was pressing into God. She realized that my future depends on what He says, not about what other people say, not about what other people think. And that can change from day to day.
And so it directly influences and affects the kind of instructions God can give you. It directly affects the way that you will see God and the way that you continue to live with God. And so Martha was still being corrected by Jesus at Lazarus’ tomb whereas Mary was given an instruction where she could fulfil it. And so the differences between someone who sits at the feet of Jesus versus someone who cares more about all the affairs of life is big. It doesn’t only happen and reveal itself in one situation, it continues to reveal itself. And so I said, if you recognize yourself as a Martha, you should choose to become a Mary. Just because there’s something for us to learn between Martha and Mary doesn’t mean to say you have to stay being a Martha. You got to understand that being a Mary requires choices in the moment that you go with God’s life rather than the way that you have always perceived yourself to have to live life. Amen.
We touched at length about responsibility, the responsibility of life, versus the pressing into God’s life. And so we spoke, and we used the young, the MiXchangers, as an example of how much pressure they’re under by society to make decisions. How long are you going to do this for? What are you going to do next? How are you going to take care of yourself? What are your responsibilities? And I went on to say that their biggest challenge and their biggest threat is that very thing that society wants to put on them. What are you going to do next? You have to be responsible with your next decision. But actually, God is saying to them, “Sit at My feet, as long as you need to sit at My feet and let Me tell you what the rest of your future looks like, not the society. Not the pressure of the social order, and the structure that is doomed to failure.” And I spoke quite a lot about how the world system is failing, economies are failing. There are governments that are failing. There is no successful government currently on the earth. And yet God has permitted all of these governments to actually govern people. But there is no successful government on the earth.
Which is why Jesus died so the government can be on His shoulders because there’s a time coming, when all of the earth, all of the universe, everything will be on His shoulders, and He will govern in righteousness and justice. And I spoke about that God’s not a fair God, He is a just God. Fairness is not, no one gets to judge you what fairness is in God. Because then it assumes that you have the right to tell God what fairness is and you get your worldview from? So if you get your worldview from God, then you wouldn’t say that He needs to be fair. If you get your worldview from God, then you would say He needs to be just, He needs to always be just and righteous because that’s how God operates. He doesn’t, He doesn’t worry about what man thinks of Him. Never has never will. He does not care what people say about Him. In fact, He, when everybody was saying something negative about Him, He sent His Son to die for us. So He did it despite us, He always loves us. Hallelujah.
So that’s the weekend in a nutshell. But I suggest that you listen to the ministry. Because between what Pastor Sharon said and how God moved in the services, it’s very powerful how God made it brought it all out over the weekend. It is now on YouTube. So, you should download it or watch it or whatever; you should. If you choose not to listen to this weekend’s messages, I would say you’ve already chosen a worldview. And your view is that’s not important enough for me. What’s been said has been said, and by the way, Pastor John reviewed it also, I’ve got three minutes of summary for the weekend, that’s good enough for me, I’m just an information guy. I’m not a sitting at the feet of Jesus guy. So that’s already your worldview. And I asked the whole audience to write down a whole bunch of things and to make notes of how you would examine yourself and assess yourself as to what your view of worldview is, and how you would change what your worldview is.
If you were sitting, seated in heavenly places with Jesus, how would you see life? And how would you examine your worldview? And how would you change your worldview? And so it was a faith and finance weekend but it came from the basis of the fact that I have said, and made a declaration under the inspiration and revelation of the Holy Spirit, that money is never a Christians problem; relationship is. Because there’s a lot of money. And the Bible says all of the wealth of the earth belongs to God, doesn’t belong to men.
The fact that men are strangling money in silos and barns of their own making, doesn’t mean to say that they are going to hold on to it forever. Because God said that all the wealth of the earth belongs to Him. So, we don’t have a money problem, we have a relationship problem. So, our relationship with God, if it is right and in order, we will have a worldview about provision and finances that will sustain us no matter what circumstances happen to us. Hallelujah. And that is our strength; that is our strength. Hallelujah.
I went after, purposefully by the Holy Spirit, I went after this thing of, “You’ve got to be responsible; you’ve got to be responsible; you’ve got to be responsible.” Because Martha used the authority of the Lord Jesus, the status of the Lord Jesus, the power of His presence as Lord, and she came and addressed Him as Lord and said, “Lord, don’t You care that she is not responsible?” And His answer to her was, “You are distracted by many things, Martha. She has chosen the one thing that cannot be taken away from her.”
If you listen and read all the different commentaries and Bible versions, you will see that one of the versions says that “She discovered the one thing that is necessary in life.” And that is to be a disciple. Not to be one that is so busy with so many distractions, constantly busy, busy, busy with distractions that you make no time for that. So, it’s my encouragement to you that if that is you, that your whole life is a momentum of distraction of doing responsible things, then your first responsibility, if you want to change your worldview, is to say, “I’m responsible enough to put Jesus first and give my first to Him. That’s my first responsibility.”
So, if you think that you are such a big responsible person, then be one. But be one to Jesus first; before you are to everything else you have to do. Because if you want everything else to be blessed, you have to put Him first. Hallelujah. So, I said to people yesterday, many people thought, “Well, I don’t have to show up at the Faith and Finance weekend because it’s all going to be about sowing and reaping and about tithing and all that kind of stuff, and it wasn’t. Huh? And so, I made this very strong declaration of intent and I said, “I’m constantly begging you for your tithes.” Do I beg you for your tithes? [Congregation: No] Do I beg you for your offerings? [Congregation: No] Am I one of those preachers that spend more than half of the service, every service, trying to get you to sow a seed into a vision? [Congregation: No].
No? Why do I not operate that way? Because I live in the presence of Jesus. I live at His feet. I live with His Word in my ears. I hear myself speaking that my trust is in Him, not in man. And my trust and my walk with God in the ministry are not based on whether you decide to tithe or not, it’s based on my giving and my faith in God. Pastor Sharon and I have chosen a long time, not to take a salary and then it was said that we should take a salary so, “Okay, we’ll take a salary” and now we give it all away. Every cent. Every month.
“So how do you live, Pastor John?” “By faith.” My spiritual leaders, Brother Copeland, Brother Jerry, Brother Hagin, all of those men. Brother Copeland made a statement a long time ago, he said, “It’s my choice to get to a place in my life where I don’t have to live on anything that I earn, that I can give it all away.” That became my standard of where I want to aim for. And so, I don’t have to worry about money. Why do I not have to worry about money? Because I know my life is in Him. He knows what we have need of before I even asked Him, He knows what I have need of. So, I don’t ask Him. I just command money to come. And that you have to hear Pastor Sharon’s message. I just command money to come, and it comes. The ministering spirits, the angels that are there for us, they make sure money comes into our hands. Hallelujah. Praise Jesus.
So, God is good to us. And so, I can speak with a fair amount of conviction and a fair amount of authority on this subject, that I don’t serve Mammon. Mammon is not my master, I serve God. And Lord knows, and I said this yesterday, Lord knows, Pastor Sharon and I, if God tells us to give everything, everything, everything away, at this stage of our lives, and at this age of our lives, if He says, “Give everything away”, we will not skip a heartbeat, we will give everything away, everything. Because if He’s asking us to do that, it means He’s got something better for us. He’s not asking us to make us poor, He’s asking us because He wants to get more stuff to us. He wants to show Himself greater to us, than He already has. Hallelujah. Praise the Lord.
And so, I come to a story that I wish to tell you today, a story of a man who, again, we’ve been talking about Isaac and how the Lord told him to stay in the land of where there was famine, and the Lord told him to sow in famine. Well, he didn’t, the Lord just told him to stay there, and He would bless him there. And his choice was to sow in a time of famine. Now, this was just plain logic. If you speak to any farmer, when there’s no rain and there’s famine and there’s drought and there’s been drought, you don’t sow seeds. You keep your seed until there is a chance that you can get the harvest. I mean, this is a no-brainer. I mean, you know, I’ve spoken to farmers many times enough to know that actually, rainfall is important. And if you have too much rainfall at the wrong time, it can also be negative. You need the right kind of rain at the right kind of time to get a maximum yield of your crop and to have a good harvest.
And so when Isaac sowed in famine, God ensured that he had the proper amount of water on the flock, on his farm and everything that he sowed, there was just the perfect amount of water so that he could reap a perfect harvest. And in the same year, he got a hundredfold return. Hallelujah. This is a supernatural thing, which again, Pastor Sharon preached about, supernatural increase, not natural increase, supernatural increase. A natural increase is dependent on how hard you work, a supernatural increase is; God gives you instruction to pray for something, to go and speak to someone, have someone call you, there are things that happen, supernatural increase is done by God it’s not done by how good you work.
I use my example of myself over this last weekend, and last week, of how I was the least qualified of all of the senior executives, to be able to earn the right to have shares in the company. But actually, God is not operating on fairness, he’s operating on someone who has got faith. And so, because I was walking in faith, and I was calling in all of my future, God created a situation where they gave me shares when they didn’t give any other people shares. Because God gives the supernatural increase, God gives it. And so, here’s another story of a person who makes a decision based on famine, there’s famine in the land. So, he leaves the city where he’s living and takes his wife and sons, and he moves away from the city. And he goes to another place. And when he gets there, his sons, marry women there, who are, they are not godly women. They’re not covenant women. They are from another tribe, which based on Old Testament scripture, was not in order for them to do.
And the result of it, according to ancient Jewish manuscripts, is not that I necessarily agree with this. I’m just stating what ancient Jewish manuscripts say. They say that the fact that the husband died, and then the two sons died shortly after each other was God’s judgment on them for marrying out of the tribes of Israel, and because of the way that they behaved. So that’s what the Jewish manuscripts say, for whatever that’s worth. The fact of the matter is that they all died way before their years were supposed to be over, certainly, the sons died, before they could even have children with these women, both of the sons died. And so, there were two daughters-in-law and a widow. And the widow decides, well, you know, the famine is over. My husband has died, and my sons have gone. And so, I must make a change. So, she goes to her two daughters-in-law, and she speaks to them and says, “It’s time for you to go back to your mother’s.”
So this is an ancient Eastern culture and I’m told that it’s still part of the, in some countries, it’s still part of the culture. That if there’s a marriage relationship, and the husband dies, the daughter must go back to the mother, not the father, but goes back to the mother. So it’s part of the ancient and certainly Eastern cultures. So because of this understanding that she had, she says to her daughters-in-law, “you must go back to your mothers”. And so they have this argument between them and say, “No, but we don’t want to go back to our mothers, we’d rather stay with you because of our experience with your God.” Because they had made a decision to take on the religion of their husbands, which was now to become Jews, Israelites.
She said, “But you are still young, you need husbands. I don’t have any more children for you to marry”. So they have this argument and she goes on to say, “there is no more ability in my loins to produce sons and even if I was to produce sons now, would you wait all the years for my sons to grow up, that you would marry my sons?” So they’re having this conversation and so they said, “Well, no.” So she said, “You should go back to your mothers and find yourselves husbands in the culture and the gods that you come from.” And one of them says, “You know what, you make a lot of sense. This is really sensible stuff. Thank you.” Thank you for giving me this opportunity and she kisses her and says goodbye to her, and her other sister-in-law, and she leaves and she goes back to her mother.
8 And Naomi said to her two daughters-in-law, verse eight of Ruth chapter one “Go, return each to her mother’s house. The Lord deal kindly with you, as you have dealt with the dead and with me. 9 The Lord grant that you may find rest, each in the house of her husband.” So she kissed them, and they lifted up their voices and wept. 10 And they said to her, “Surely we will return with you to your people.” So this is the argument that they’re having. So I’ve already told you the rest. 13 ……No, my daughters; for it grieves me very much for your sakes that the hand of the Lord has gone out against me!” Because she’s the one who lost all the men in her life. 14 Then they lifted up their voices and wept again, and Orpah kissed her mother-in-law, but Ruth clung to her. 15 And she said, “Look, your sister-in-law has gone back to her people and to her gods; return after your sister-in-law.” 16 But Ruth said: “Entreat me not to leave you, Or to turn back from following after you; For wherever you go, I will go; And wherever you lodge, I will lodge; Your people shall be my people, And your God, my God. 17 Where you die, I will die, And there will I be buried. The Lord do so to me, and more also, If anything but death parts you and me.” 18 When she saw that she was determined to go with her, she stopped speaking to her. 19 Now the two of them went until they came to Bethlehem. And it happened, when they had come to Bethlehem, that all the city was excited because of them; and the women said, “Is this Naomi?” 20 But she said to them, “Do not call me Naomi; call me Mara, for the Almighty, has dealt very bitterly with me. 21 I went out full, and the Lord has brought me home again empty. Why do you call me Naomi, since the Lord has testified against me, and the Almighty has afflicted me?” 22 So Naomi returned, and Ruth the Moabitess her daughter-in-law with her, who returned from the country of Moab. Now they came to Bethlehem at the beginning of barley harvest. (Ruth 1:8-22 NKJV) They returned back to Bethlehem, at a time when the harvest was about to be taken. They returned with nothing.
So there are just a few points I want to make and I’m going to move through this as quickly as I can. Because there’s a lot more that I have to say about this. But I want you to see Ruth’s attitude. Her attitude was, I don’t really care about what my sister-in-law chose, as close as we were as close as we were in our relationship. And Naomi had high regard for them, because she said, “You’ve dealt kindly with the dead. You’ve dealt kindly with me. So because of this, I release you to go and do whatever you do, you have no obligations to me.” But Ruth said, “it’s not an obligation for me.” This is actually something that I really want in my life, I don’t want to live my life by obligation. I want to live my life by relationship. This is a big choice that you and I have to make. Are we obligated to serve God? Or are we loving God because we have a relationship with Him?
If you’re living and if you’re in church, or are you having a relationship with God because you are afraid of consequences, or because you feel obligated, for whatever reason, my encouragement to you is to rather study what Ruth did. And make yourself available to God out of relationship and really begin to understand that the words that you speak about your future, have a lot to do with how your future turns out. Because Ruth was so determined to be with Naomi that she said, “I am making my commitment so strongly to you that if I do not say what I have chosen if I don’t live up to my choice, may God do to me what I’ve just said to you.” In other words, I will die and be buried, if I do not live up to my obligation of what I’ve said, out of relationship. So her words were relational words. Her words were covenant words. Her attitude was I’m in covenant with you and I’m not taking no for an answer.
Hello, come on. Isn’t that the way Jesus lives with us? He starts out with a covenant. He says, “I’m in covenant with you and you don’t even know it yet.” When you receive Me as Lord and Savior I touch your life with that, then we start to integrate ways, then we have strategic intentions, right? What is Ruth saying? Ruth was saying, I understand covenant because I’ve learned some things about your God. I’ve touched you and your God, and I want that. I’ve integrated my ways with you and so I’m not leaving. I’m expecting strategic intentions that God has, for my future to be revealed. I mean, I’m just using language that God gave me, but this is the framework. So then, if God has got strategic intentions for you, Naomi, and for me, by association. Remember Brother Jerry said, increased comes by association, right? Who you associate with has got everything to do with everything. So by association, whatever God’s got for you as strategic intentions, and moves into divine productivity, I want that.
So I don’t know about the covenant yet, as the last part, but I know that those parts, I can agree to. You got the picture? She had the whole relational framework that God gave me, she was doing all of it and she was speaking all of it and making a commitment to all of it. And she said, “Only death can make me stop this.” Come on. You’re all a bit quiet this morning. Is that because you’re listening? But you know, it helps me if you say amen once in a while, even if you are listening. Praise the Lord.
So they’ve got nothing to eat. So it was a practice in those days. It was a practice at barley harvest time, as they were going about the harvest, there would be bits of barley that would be left on the ground. And it was kindness and generosity dependent on who the farmer was and each farmer would have their own, make their own choice as to whether they would do this or not. Some farmers would scrape up every little bit of thing and not allow any of the poor people onto the farm to do this. But generous farmers, allowed the poor people of the covenant of Israel to come onto their farm and take up all of the gleanings, all of the bits that are left over and live by the food that was left behind. So there was a man, his name was Boaz and Boaz was such a generous man. So all of these people are doing this in the field.
2 So Ruth the Moabitess said to Naomi, “Please let me go to the field, and glean heads of grain after him in whose sight I may find favour.” In other words, she’s going to go and find somebody that she can find favour with, that she can go get some food for them. And she said to her, “Go, my daughter.” 3 Then she left, and went and gleaned in the field after the reapers. And she happened to come to the part of the field belonging to Boaz, who was of the family of Elimelech. (Ruth 2:2-3 NKJV) That was the family she married into, it was her father-in-law that had died, so he was part of the family of the father-in-law that she got married into. Coincidence?
You see, I don’t believe that if you serve God, there is any coincidence about anything you do in your life. If you serve God, if you put Him first place and you seek Him, God will cause strategic relationships to fall into place for you, everywhere. His strategic intentions will all be about relationships. Remember, I’ve said this to you, your assignment is never to an organization, or to a practice, or to a process. Your assignment is always to a people or a person. And God is always about the strategic intentions of the way He aligns people. He never does it by mistake. There’s no mistake in God, He does it by intent. The mistake comes from the people who don’t fulfil what God has asked them to fulfil.
So, this is a big difference shown between Ruth and Orpah. She could have, Orpah could have said, “I’m gonna go with Naomi too, and I’m gonna make her God, my God.” But she said, “No, what you actually said makes sense. It’s a sensible, logical thing. I go back to my people, I go back and I find myself my husband and I do what I have to do.” Ruth said, “I don’t care what you’re doing, I’m staying with you.” Hallelujah. They had equal opportunity. Hello? They had equal opportunity. And like I said to you, God is not a God of fairness. God is a God of justice. And so, equal opportunity. One of them chose to go back to the way I’ve always done things, one says, “I’m going into a new order of God for my life.”
⁴ Now behold, Boaz came from Bethlehem, and said to the reapers, “The Lord be with you!” And they answered him, “The Lord bless you!” And this was a common exchange between covenant people of Israel. ⁵ Then Boaz said to his servant who was in charge of the reapers, “Whose young women is this?” Talking to Ruth. ⁶ So the servant who was in charge of the reapers answered and said, “It is the young Moabite women who came back with Naomi from the country of Moab. ⁷ And she said, ‘Please let me glean and gather after the reapers among the sheaves.’ So she came and has continued from morning until now, though she rested a little in the house.” ⁸ Then Boaz said to Ruth (Ruth 2:4-8 NKJV) Now hold on a minute, there’s all these people in the field reaping, gleanings. He spots her. Coincidence? This is about a covenant agreement Ruth made.
Now God goes to work, based on covenant agreements. It is an unquestionable thing in my life that I say as Brother Jerry says about Brother Copeland. And if you hear Brother Jerry speak about Brother Copeland, he says this all the time, he says, “I would not be in my life without Brother Copeland. My whole ministry has excelled, and I have fulfilled assignment. And I’m blessed in all of what I do, because of my divine covenant and divine connection with Brother Copeland.” Brother Jerry often refers to that. His love, his honour, his dedication, his commitment, everything that he has, he gives recognition to the lifelong alignment and covenant that God has between him and Brother Copeland. And I would say, and I say it, as often as I can say it. I thank God that God brought me into the life of Brother Jerry because my life is blessed because of him. And the closer I get to him, the more we do things like give him honour seed, and the more we recognize and give him place in our lives, in our ministry. Certainly, it starts with me. Yes? Because I’m the one God connected him with. And if I do this, then all of you have the same right to it. If I don’t do this, then we’ll cut off from that. Thank God, He put it in my heart, that we are in the right place. And I can say, “My increase has come by association.”
And so, Brother Jerry doesn’t run this church from day to day. He doesn’t. He didn’t decide on the MiXchange program. God didn’t put that in his heart for our church. That comes from my leadership. But I recognize that my leadership has the divine increase on it. It has the divine favour of God on it, and it has the divine timing of God on it. In just the same way that Brother Jerry has had to wait many, many years for some of these faith things to come to pass, I’ve had to wait for things in my life. But it, but in the fullness of time, it’s also the fullness of my faith. Praise the Lord.
And so he saw her. And he said to her, “⁸ You will listen, my daughter, will you not? Do not go to glean in another field, where some other farmer is also generous, stay in my field, nor go from here, but stay close by my young women, the servants that are gleaning the harvest. “⁹ Let your eyes be on the field which they reap and go after them. Have I not commanded the young men not to touch you? And when you are thirsty, go to the vessels and drink from what the young men have drawn.” ¹⁰ So she fell on her face, bowed down to the ground, and said to him, “Why have I found favour in your eyes, that you should take notice of me since I am a foreigner?” She’s referring back to the fact that she wasn’t born into covenant. She was adopted into covenant, by choice. She was not born into covenant, and so now she reverts back to what she was born, what she was not born into, rather than what choices she made. Why? Because this is important for her to have an honest, open relationship with the man that is now finding favour with her, or she’s finding favour with him.
“¹¹And Boaz answered and said to her, “It has been fully reported to me, all that you have done for your mother-in-law since the death of your husband, and how you have left your father and your mother and the land of your birth, and have come to a people whom you did not know before. ¹² The Lord repay your work… What work did she do? All she did was stay connected in relationship. Up to this point, they don’t actually have work to do. At harvest time she’s going into the field to care for her mother-in-law. But the report that he got was – this is an honourable woman that has made a lifetime commitment of covenant. That means he started to do some homework when he laid eyes on her. Is this a coincidence? No, this is about God. “¹² The Lord repay your work, and a full reward be given you by the Lord God of Israel, under whose wings you have come for refuge.”(Ruth 2:8-12 NKJV)
I want to tell you something, people, when you make a lifetime covenant with God about Him being first in your life, your possessions, your money, your talent, your skill, your energy. When you make a commitment that you give it to God, you will find reward under the wings of the Almighty God. You will find favour there, you will find reward there. He will never disappoint you. He will never let you down. He will have people put eyes on you that seem impossible that you could be singled out, out of all of the people that are there. And you being a foreigner, so-called out of the norm, out of the scope of everything.
Certainly from my perspective, when I was in the corporate world, I didn’t have the degrees, I didn’t have all of the credentials that all of my colleagues had. But God had people put their eyes on me that gave favour to me, and blessed me, and increased me, and prospered me because I had dealt kindly with the church. I had been committed and I had been dedicated to the order of God in my life. And I had dealt kindly and lovingly with my wife. And if people, men, if you don’t think that the way you treat your wife has got anything to do with your prosperity, you’re wrong. It’s got everything to do with who you become. Anyway, I don’t want to go there. I’ve got other things to say today.
¹¹ …“It has been fully reported to me… So, the end of the story goes like this and I need to get to a few other scriptures but the end of the story goes like this. Naomi tells her to, on a particular day to, after she’s done all the gleanings when the harvest is complete, she says, “After the celebrations, find out where he’s going to rest. And where he goes to rest. You go and lie at his feet, and you go and take a covering, and you pull a covering over yourself. And you lie at his feet. So this again was a common practice at the time, that servants would go into where an owner or a master was, and they would lie crosswise to the feet of the master. If they lay at the feet of the master the servant was by practice, telling the master, “I’m seeking the covering of your favour and the covering of your household to be my household. I’m seeking you to cover me with who you are. I’m seeking your strength to be my strength.” So, she goes and she does everything Ruth told her to do. He has a couple of glasses of wine, celebration, he becomes all mellow, he has a great harvest, the whole harvest season is over, they celebrate the great incoming of the harvest.
And she goes into the tent and takes her garment and takes his garment off his feet and she lies at his feet. When he wakes up, he finds her there at his feet and he says, “Why have you done this?” And she basically says, “I want to find favour in your eyes, and I would want you, I want you to take care of me.” So Boaz says to her, “It is not my job, it is not my responsibility by order of the Israelite covenant, it is not my responsibility to take care of you. There is another one who is first in place to redeem Elimelech, to redeem Elimelech’s household. I know I am not saying it right, but anyway. Elimelech. Elimelech is better. Elimelech. It is not my responsibility to redeem you and or Ruth. There is one that is first in line to redeem you. So he says, “But leave it with me.” And I am having to tell this story now because I can’t read the whole chapter to you.
So I am telling you the story of what happened. He goes and he calls the elders, ten elders at the gates of the city, he calls the elders of the city and he comes and he calls the man first in line to redeem Ruth, and to redeem the property and all of the rights of Elimelech. And so he has a conversation with him and he says, “There is property to be redeemed here, would you want to redeem the property?” The man says, “Yes.”
At the gates of the city, when business and order, the order of business was done. And so, Boaz says, “It is your right, I grant you the rights to redeem the property of Elimelech’s. But you must redeem his wife or his daughter and mother with – you must redeem Ruth and Naomi, come with the package.” And so that man first in line says, “No, but I want the property but I am not prepared to put up with other women in my household.”
Be that as it may. I find the hand of God on this. So, then he says, “Then if you don’t want to redeem it, I will redeem the property and I will redeem Ruth, and I will redeem what belongs to the household of Elimelech.” And the elders of the city all witness it and what happens is, in order those days, in order to show that an agreement has been reached, is that they would take their sandals off, and their agreement would be to…the man who was conceding that the agreement had been reached would take his sandals off. Sometimes in a very, on the contrary, on a very difficult thing, sandals would be taken off and just thrown at the feet of someone in recognition that this has been done, but it would be done very aggressively, and it would be done sometimes in very challenging ways.
But in this case, there was an order that was accomplished and this man took his sandals off and he placed the sandals at the feet of Boaz, and said, “You have the right of redemption.” In front of the elders of the city. And so then he goes…and he goes and he says to Ruth, “I have redeemed, I have redeemed you.” And so he takes her as his wife. So she goes from having no husband, within a very short space of time. Remember they arrived at the beginning of the harvest, by the end of the harvest time, which is no more than at the most, two months. Normally shorter than that. But let’s say it is two months. She goes from losing her husband, grieving over him, having to make a choice of covenant, serving her mother-in-law, getting food for them, doing everything the mother-in-law told her to do that was not her custom to do, but listening to what her mother-in-law told her to do. She did everything to the letter of what Naomi told her to do.
And in the process, she finds a husband who marries her, redeems her mother-in-law, redeems the whole of Elimelech’s family. Meaning, just the two women, because the men are all gone. So Boaz has a child with Ruth. So, Ruth…come on people. I am telling you now, what I am telling you this story, the power of … I said to Pastor Sharon this morning, we have been speaking to each other, it is like God is so strongly on what has happened here this weekend, and where He is taking us as a ministry, it is happening so powerfully and strongly with us, that we are literally vibrating in our spirits because of what God is telling us.
Ruth did everything that she was told, and she has a child. Now understand all of this transpired. She has now gone from grief to redemption. Having nothing to have everything, in a matter of months. Supernatural increase. In a matter of months, not only does she get restored financially but she gets restored because she makes another decision. This child, that is so precious to me, that I have all the rights over this child, she takes her son and she doesn’t take him to her husband who has redeemed her, she takes her son and she goes to Naomi, and says, “Naomi, I ask you to name this son, I am leaving the blessing of what you name him to be. I am leaving it to you because you are the one that has the covenant, I am merely the one living under the covenant. So even though I have been redeemed into covenant again, I recognise who you are in covenant.” So she brings her child to Naomi to name. And she names him Obed.
And Obed will grow up to have a son. At least one, anyway, that became famous and his son’s name is Jesse. And Jesse had eight sons. And the last son that he had was David. Who became king after which the King of kings would come. Ruth, who had no covenant, said, “I will take your order and your covenant to be my covenant. Whatever you say I will do. Wherever you go I will go. Whatever God says you have to do, I’m going to do. I am going to go with you. And whatever happens, whatever justice or injustice happens, I will be with you until death parts us. And only death can part us.”
And so God says, “I will take these words, I will take this level of commitment to the covenant. I will take this and I will show you what redemption looks like. I will show you what restoration looks like.” Because her words were not based on her deep in-depth knowledge of the covenant, of the children of Israel, all of the years of Moses and all of the years of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and all of the years, she came from a different nation, with a whole different set of culture, and heritage, and stuff. But she recognised that there was a covenant here that she wanted to be part of.
And so she said, “I am making an everlasting covenant.” That is what she said. “I am making an everlasting covenant. As long as I last, my covenant stands. And if I break my covenant I will seize to last.” I will cease to be. You see that kind of level of commitment where you seek to do what God tells you to do and she couldn’t have done it on her own because she was not in a place of maturity or understanding or covenant life based on who she comes … So when she speaks to Boaz the first time, she says, “I’m a foreigner,” meaning I don’t know all the ways that you have, I don’t know how you serve the God that you serve. So if you are giving me favour, understand, I don’t fully get what you’re doing. But I have someone that I am connected to, and I’m doing everything they tell me to do.
He says, “I know. I’ve been listening. I’ve been checking it out. I’ve done my inquiries. I’ve asked people, what are you doing? And how did you do it? And why did you do it, and everything else? And so I’ve come to the decision and come to my own understanding that you are women of honour. You’re a woman of covenant commitment. And because you’re a woman, I’ve told the young men, no one is allowed to touch you. And I’ve told them that whatever is their portion, they must share it with you. Both the young women and the young men, they must share it with you.” And ultimately, he redeems everything from the past, into the present. Come on, he redeemed everything from the past, into the present. And then when they come into the present, out of relationship that is born from a God assignment, and a God alignment, the future is also present in their union into the loins of Jesse into the loins of David into the lions of Solomon, and into the loins of and into the of Mary, ultimately, where Jesus is born. Hallelujah.
You want to talk about redemption, you want to talk about restoration of relationships. God is a God of relationships, and He can’t wait to be restored to you. He can’t wait for you to restore back to Him. He’s waiting for you to come with everything that you’ve got and you say, “I seek You first, I put You first, I desire You more than anything else and whatever it takes, I will not leave You. Doesn’t matter what happens, I will not leave You. My commitment to You is forever. It’s everlasting. I will live for You forever.” Hallelujah. And if you have any doubt about it, then God made it very clear that you understood that your choices have legacy implications, they have eternal implications. Everything that you do and say, as a born-again, believer is based on what God wants to do through you because He bought you with a price, He puts you on the earth at this time, so that you could fulfil what God needs you to fulfil. And legacy is on the line, not just yours, there’s a great cloud of witnesses waiting for us to step up to the plate and be what God wants us to be.
Because they cannot fulfil and be fully mature eternally until we become that. And so God is waiting for a church, He’s waiting for a people who will be totally committed to Him that way. So people asked me this question, this is the biggest question these young people have to ask. So what are you doing next? And why aren’t you going to do this? And why are you going to do that? And if you are going to do that, who’s going to provide for you? Who? How? How are you going to get this thing done? How are you going to get this thing done? Surely, if you’ve got things that can happen for you, and under the leading of the Holy Spirit yesterday, Pastor Sharon, singled out Ester and asked Ester some questions. And so then I used that as an opportunity to go there with Ester, in public. And Ester told me she got eight distinctions from school. And that the recommendation by the education psychologists or what do they call those people? Industrial psychologists? I don’t know. I don’t know. But you did some kind of tests, right? I don’t know what that test is called. No. A career counselling test. So they were desperate to tell Ester she must become a medical doctor because of her marks because of her disposition and how compassionate she is. And so I asked her, so why? Why are you not doing that Ester? She said, “Because God got a hold of my heart and I cannot. I cannot follow what the world says when God has got ahold of my heart. And I’ve got to follow what He says. And so I’m following Him with all of my heart, regardless of my credentials. My credentials mean nothing to me because the world’s system of performance and reward recognition means nothing to me. Because God’s got my heart.”
And I had to make clear that she’s in the ministry, and she has told me this and that she and she has told all the other people publicly and it’s not something I’m, I’m ratting on her today. She has told everybody publicly, that she’s, as far as she’s concerned, she’s called to this ministry. She’s called to Pastor Sharon and I, and she’s not leaving unless God knocks her on the head. And she literally said, “That’s God’s got to come to visit me and visit you before I have to leave here.” That’s what she said. I can’t do that. God’s got to do that. God’s got to do that in her heart. So, I had a conversation with Mia. And I’m going to conclude with this, is this okay, for me to do this today Mia? I have asked you. So this is not a surprise to you. We’ve talked about this that I can use. I’m using, your little clip that you have sent me. I know. I know. I know. But it makes everything more powerful. So I have to finish with this. Can we run that clip? She took this video of herself when she was eight years old. So we are going to run it on the side screens, I asked you guys to turn down the lights so that everybody can see it and you can turn up the sound if we can do that clip. [Pastor John played Mia’s clip]
Where’s my microphone? Come up here Mia. Hold on to this. [Pastor John is handing the microphone to Mia] So I wanted you to see what an eight-year-old more or less about eight years old she was, her heart, her spirit man is alive to God. She’s absolutely captured by the word of faith. She’s captured by the strategic and divine relationships that God has placed in our lives together. And then she goes to High School. And she finds this passion for academia. And you also got, how many distinctions?
Mia:
Also eight distinctions, Pastor John.
Pastor John:
So I checked this with her the other day, she got eight distinctions, and she finished in the top five in the country, with all of the subjects in her academia.
Mia:
Top 5%
Pastor John:
Top 5% in the country. Okay. I mean, you know, we’ve got a couple of girls that’s sitting on the front row here that are fairly smart, much smarter than me. So, I mean, I wish I could get those many distinctions when I was at school. In my dreams, but, she got a passion for academia. And so she goes into the system that rewards the performance of academic excellence. And as she begins to be taken up with academic excellence, she’s using scriptures. So what did you say? How did you use scriptures to help you get those degrees? How did you use the word of God, Mia?
Mia:
Oh, Pastor John, I mean, it’s exactly what Pastor John said yesterday, as well of using and what Pastor Sharon also mentioned, is using the scriptures for your own self-appointed purpose. And so, I mean, I would get in the mornings, and I would speak faith, you know, but not for the plans that God had I spoke faith for the plans that I had. So I would …..
Pastor John:
Because you wanted the maximum results that you could get at school?
Mia:
Yes, Pastor,
Pastor John:
You wanted the best?
Mia:
Yes.
Pastor John:
Yes, you were pressing for? I think you said to me if you didn’t get 100%, I know because I went through this with you and your mom,
Mia:
Yes, Pastor John. And so I mean, I would use any avenue, you know, that I could improve my marks. So whether it was studying more, or whether it was in also using the Word of God, because I knew that those principles would work. And those patterns would work. So in the mornings, I would get up, and I wouldn’t obey the Word of God and pray for my Nation, I would go and, you know, “thank You, Lord, that I have the mind of Christ and thank You know that I’m ….”
Pastor John:
Ten times smarter.
Mia:
“Ten times smarter than those around me. And thank You Lord that I have knowledge and insight and wisdom.” And, and so I mean, I would use the Word of God for my own purposes and my own plans. And I thought that I was…. I’m walking by faith and I’ve got this, you know.
Pastor John:
And you were at Church every Sunday.
Mia:
Yes, Pastor John.
Pastor John:
You were listening to all the messages. And so if I had said to you then, how would you have told me my teaching about faith? About performance? Faith as a formula? What would you have said to me?
Mia:
Well, Pastor John, I would have said, Pastor John, “I’ve been sitting in Church, I know that faith isn’t a formula for success. It’s a pattern for victory.” And so I’m not just following the pattern, even though I was making it a formula. I was following, I would say, “I’m making it a pattern for victory in the world system.” But actually, I was making it a formula to succeed as far as I possibly could in the world.
Pastor John:
So actually, without knowing it kind of the pressure of the system was actually driving you to use a faith-based confession to get the best results that you could get.
Mia:
Yes.
Pastor John:
Meantime, you were doing it for what you wanted, rather than seeking what God wanted for your life.
Mia:
Yes, Pastor John.
Pastor John:
Is that true?
Mia:
Yes, Pastor John.
Pastor John:
And so what do you say about that now?
Mia:
Well, Pastor John now I will say, why was I sleepwalking? I mean, where was Ephesians chapter 4 in my life for awake oh sleeper back then? And, and I mean, that I really am grateful for God actually giving us that wake-up call with, I Will Take The Children. And I mean, you know, it’s been a whole journey for me, because of all of the things that I sowed in my heart, then, and all of the things that other people sowed into my heart then that I took, and I believed and I ran with it. And I mean, I ran with the world’s vision. I didn’t run with God’s vision for my life. And so I am grateful for the wake-up call, and to arise and to shine and to wake up to the life that God has for me, and not what the world says I should have. And also to become a Mary to sit at the feet of Jesus and to not be that performance-driven. What will people think of me? How can I achieve? How can I push? How can I do better? That constantly performing driven, and I mean, not relational with God, not relational with people around me, because I had my own things in, you know, insight. And so I’m so grateful for the wake-up call of I Will Take The Children, to actually wake me up and to say, “Look at where you are.” And I mean, you try and to succeed in a system that’s in any case broken, you know, so it’s actually it’s a false sense of success. It’s the futility of the mind. And so I really am grateful to God for that wake-up call and for saving me and for saving me from myself. Because even if I thought I would, could live in a glamorous world of academia, I would have been completely consumed by it.
Pastor John:
Consumed and obsessed
Mia:
Obsessed, Pastor John.
Pastor John:
You were obsessed.
Mia:
I was obsessed.
Pastor John:
At High School. I mean, me and your mom, we had to often talk to you and say, “Come now, Mia, 93% is okay.” She would come up to me at church on Sundays and say, “I only got 93% for Maths”. She says, “I don’t know where I’ve got the 7% wrong, I need a 100%.” And I say, “Mia, relax, enjoy the 93%.” Right? But what had happened was that her love for academia became an obsession, became a passion, became a driven component of her life. And so she didn’t even know it. But she had to be delivered from herself.
Mia:
Yes, Pastor John
Pastor John:
I couldn’t have done it. You had to make a decision that you will give the first of your life to God.
Mia:
Yes, Pastor John.
Pastor John:
And so that, even though you were still saying, “I’m gonna give my life to,” because this is what happened to you. I’m gonna give the first of my life to God and then I’ll go to University.
Mia:
Yes.
Pastor John:
That was the beginning of your choice.
Mia:
Yes, Pastor John.
Pastor John:
But you at least gave the first of your life to God.
Mia:
Yes, Pastor John.
Pastor John:
And then as God started to deal with you, you began to make, you began to see things. And then, as we worked, walked in the journey together, you began to understand, actually, I’m still wrestling with this issue. And I’ve got to get victory over this issue in my heart. And so it was your choice to make?
Mia:
Yes, Pastor John. And I mean, it was also because there was more light coming into the darkness of the world that I was living in, that I could then make the decision to say, “Okay, Lord, really, really, really Your plan and not my will.” And I’m dying to myself and forsaking my thoughts, which actually aren’t my thoughts, it’s the world’s thoughts that I thought were my own, you know, and so I really…
Pastor John:
What a, what a yuck thing.
Mia:
What a yucky thing Pastor John! And I mean, and that there really was continuous and that was the awesome, I mean, and still is the awesome thing for me from last year and this year, as well as there’s a continuous light that keeps on coming to us, I mean, in the Word and how we relate to each other in the space as well. So, you know, there’s always that light shining and exposing the darkness in your lives. And it’s because I could then see what was the darkness in my life, and I could see where the light was so that I could then come to the light and not live in the darkness anymore.
Pastor John:
So where are you at right now, Mia?
Mia:
Well, Pastor John, I’m in my planted place. I mean, I know that I’m called to you, and Pastor Sharon, Pastor John, and I mean, like Ester says, “God is gonna have to,” I mean,
Pastor John:
Knock you on the head.
Mia:
Knock me on the head, painted in the clouds. I know, Brother Hagin says, that’s not how He talks to us. But I mean, really, I know that I’m called to be here. And, and I mean, I’m in my planted place, and I don’t pick up roots and go to …..
Pastor John:
Somewhere else.
Mia:
To somewhere else. So this is where I stay.
Pastor John:
And it is fair to say, and you and I talked about it in the week hey? Because of a WhatsApp message you sent to me. So we had a conversation during the week and the conversation was, “How? That university, academia world, would stimulate that obsession in you – again, even though you have light now?
Mia:
Yes, Pastor John.
Pastor John:
Because of who you were then, the likelihood is the further you got entrenched in academia, the more it would consume you. The more it would push you to do better and better.
Mia:
Yes.
Pastor John:
And so the result of that at High School, and the result of that would be, is that you would isolate from people because you will be focused on performance. You’ll be focused on results. So you isolate from people, you don’t build relationships, meaningfully.
Mia:
Yes, Pastor John.
Pastor John:
And now, look at all the rich relationships you have.
Mia:
Yes, Pastor John, and I mean, even just my perspective of relationships completely shifted because in school it was constantly while a relationship is just something that draws of my time that I could rather use to study. So, I mean, even during break times and stuff I would optimize that time to study or to finish homework or to, you know, to get ahead in the system. And so relationships to me, then were more of a you actually draining my time because I could rather be improving my own marks.
Pastor John:
Get away from me. I’m busy.
Mia:
Yes, Pastor John, where’s now actually, I need the relationships for my growth and I love the relationships and it brings that richness and that fullness to my life as well.
Pastor John:
I, you know, when I used to speak to you after Church as I mean, both your mom and I, and we, you know, we worked in tandem together, we had an agreement, you know, that we would try and stop you or try to help you not to be as obsessed about, about achieving as you were. We saw it getting a hold of you. And it was a concern to us, and it was a matter of prayer for us. Don’t you all see …don’t you begin to see the eight year old girl speaking again? Let me tell you, she was this close for the world to take her and consume her and take all of who she is. Because she’s got the smarts enough to do whatever her intellect would give her the opportunity to do. Thank you, my girl.
Mia:
Thank you, Pastor John.
Pastor John:
Hallelujah. God said, I Will Take The Children. And He is. And you know why He’s taking the children? Because stubbornly older people don’t want to go with what God says and wanna stick to the system that’s worked for their fathers, and their grandfathers and their fathers before them. Want to stick to an old system that’s being more and more revealed how broken it is. I’m not telling her what to do with her life. She’s got to make her own choice. But in this environment, she has found life and light and she has found that God is giving her all of the tools she needs to live life. So now I asked you, and I’m really, I have to be done now because I’ve got another timetable and I’ve got to pray over the Missions Team. But, do you think God after everything that Ester… and it goes for all of these young people sitting here, it just so happens that Pastor Sharon was led to talk about Ester yesterday, I mean Mia and I, she WhatsApped me, she asked me some very big questions and so I didn’t respond to her on WhatsApp I said, “Let me have a meeting with her,” because these are big questions she’s asked me.
So in the conversation, she said, “I have this video of myself.” I said, “Well, Mia, can I use your testimony on Sunday if the Holy Spirit leads us that way?” That was before the weekend started before Pastor Sharon decided to use Ester and before everything else – this was already in the heart of God that it would come out this weekend.
God is in the process of restoration and redemption. If we will believe it, He will take the children and He will take you. You don’t have to stay a Martha, you can become a Mary. It doesn’t matter how old you are. It doesn’t matter what you’ve done. It doesn’t matter how much the system and the institutions have got a hold of you. God will restore you. But you’ve got to make a commitment. You can’t make a half-hearted thing and say, “I’ll be partly there and partly here and I’ll try to achieve this while I’m achieving that.” It doesn’t work. The Bible says you will serve one and hate the other. Love one, hate the other. You’ve got to give your all to God or don’t bother because otherwise, you’re going to be like a boat on the sea that is completely just driven by the winds of change and wherever the wind of change has to take you, that’s where you’ll go. Praise the Lord.
Faith and finance and relationship – God brought us supernaturally on a journey. Say, “We’re on a journey.” God has brought us supernaturally on a journey from 2014 when God said take a bunch of people to Fort Worth and go and sit at Brother Jerry’s table and tell him that my strength is your strength, and I am here to serve you, Brother Jerry. He said one thing to me, he said, “John, never stop preaching faith.”
From that moment to this moment, God has started to instruct and guide my steps all the way; to go and spend five weeks with him, to spend seven weeks with him and everything that God said, “Do,” I’ve done it and God has brought us closer and closer. And it’s no wonder He could use us and say, “I will take the children.” Because God created a spiritual climate because of covenant relationships. Divine alignment and divine assignment that is in order, that is in place, that is the will of God.
Is it perfect? Never. It will never be perfect. There is no such thing as a perfect relationship, humanly speaking. There is always going to be a flaw, there will always be a fault. Let me tell you, Brother Jerry is not a perfect man, and neither am I. I’ve told you this; if you put your trust in me, I’ll let you down because I’m not a perfect man and Brother Jerry’s not perfect and Brother Copeland is not perfect. There’s only one Person who’s perfect and His name is Jesus, that ever lived. Hallelujah.
And we can put all of our trust in Him. But what I can do is, I can do what Ruth did, “I will stay with you, no matter what happens, I will never leave you, I will never leave you. You instruct me what to do, I will do what you tell me to do.” And then you see what you…watch redemption and restoration come into play. And how does that happen through this vessel? Through this kind of teaching, today. Through these kinds of testimonies that you are hearing. And I’m delighted to say that God is taking up many parents that have watched what’s going on. And many adults that are families that don’t even have children here that have seen what’s going on, and they say, “We want in on this. We want in on this, we want to stop being Martha’s and we want to be Mary’s. At least we want to give some of our time to be Mary’s so that we can transition into thinking the way Jesus thinks.” Hallelujah.
Stand with me, please. Can I have the Missions team? Where’s Otto and Tina and Sid and Pat? Glory to God. Hallelujah. Kom hierso. COVID tried to shut down our ability to go into Africa, meantime, God gave Brother Jerry materials that he gave to us. We had some materials that God gave us to, and we created an African Bible Academy, cross border Academy, that we gave them the materials that even through COVID the pastors and the people kept teaching them stuff. Brother Jerry’s got a whole series of back-to-the-basics of Bible studies. And that’s part of the curriculum that they’ve been going through. So when they go now, they’re going to go and give certificates to 3400 odd people that have been studying the Word all through COVID.
They’ve been studying the Word, growing in the Word and listening to God. And so, we are making an impact. You are making an impact because we are sending them and they are going. And so thank you, to the four of you, to go away from this comfortable place for 23 days, and go and do the work of God. Thank you. Thank you. Hallelujah. You know, the devil tried to steal both of their lives. [Pastor John referring to Sid and Pat.] He did. And thank God they made it through. And they are here alive, ready to go and do the will of God again, and better. Amen.
And I’m grateful that God brought Tina and Otto back to us so that this is part of the assignment that God has asked them to fulfil. Hallelujah. So won’t you stretch out your hands, please and just pray with me? Pastor Sharon, Pastor Christi won’t you come and stand behind me here, come and stand with us. Please? Hallelujah.
Just lay your hands on them, please Sharon. Hallelujah. Thank You, Father, we thank You, Lord, that they are not just going because they feel like it’s a good idea. They are sent ones out of an Ecclesia, a properly authorised, constituted spiritually in order church of the Lord Jesus Christ, and we send them out Father. And we say to them, “Go, and may you go in peace, may you go in joy. May you go under the power of the anointing of the Holy Spirit. May He fall upon you and the may the fire of God be upon you wherever you go.” And we declare Father and we accept right now, though, that as we send them, You anoint them, and healing miracles will occur, and there will be salvations that will happen. And there will be many mighty and wonderful things that You will do through them as they go into all of the countries that they are going to, touching all of the people. And we thank You for new divine connections and new opportunities and new things that You will reveal to us as we go Father. Hallelujah.
And we declare that no weapon formed against them will prosper. They will be protected wherever they go. Everything that they need to do God is with them in Jesus Name. God is with them. God is with them. Our prayers go with them, our blessing goes with them. All of what they need, God has provided for them. Hallelujah. Praise the Name of the Lord. Praise the Name of Jesus. Praise the Name of Jesus. Glory to God. Hallelujah. Thank you, thank you [Pastor John speaking to Missions team]. Hallelujah. Praise the Lord. Hallelujah.
I want to tell you, we’re going to hold them up in prayer and ask you to pray for them. They’re going for 23 days, you should pray for them every day, every day for their protection, for the anointing of God, the increase, the blessing, the everything that God has for them in this season of their lives. Hallelujah. Glory to Jesus. Praise the Name of Jesus. I don’t know Sid must have been 60 years old when he first, when I first said you guys have got to go into missions. How old were you, Sid? 58? I wasn’t far wrong. The reason I’m telling you that is that even when you 58, 60, whatever, when God says it’s time for you to be on your assignment, doesn’t matter how old you are, He redeems all of the time. Praise Jesus. Hallelujah. Glory to God. Glory to God, Glory to God. Praise Jesus. Praise Jesus. Praise Jesus. Praise the Name of the Most High God. Glory to God, Glory to God. Hallelujah. His Name is great. His Name is the best Name. It’s the highest authority. There is no other name, but the Name of Jesus and every other name must bow to the Name of Jesus. And every tongue will confess that Jesus is Lord. Every tongue, every tongue, every tongue will confess that Jesus is Lord. Hallelujah. Glory to God. Praise Jesus.
Won’t you just put your hand on your chest like this and say, “I am a son of God. I choose to give my life to Him, to serve Him, and I receive His best for me. I receive His plan for me. I receive His purpose and assignment for me. And I will be in alignment with that. In Jesus Name, Amen.”
If you couldn’t say that with conviction, use this prayer today to say, “Lord, that is my first prayer. Now I’m going to ask You for the conviction, the determination, the drive, the purpose that I need to do to make this switch, this change, that I will give you my first, I will give you my best, no matter what else happens.” Hallelujah. I pray that you yourselves will have a time of refreshing ahead of you in this week. Times of blessing, times of encounters with God. We are on a journey with God together. God is doing something mighty amongst us. And we are on a journey to see how great and how marvelous and now good and wonderful these things are that God will do to us. Do you receive that in Jesus Name? Hallelujah. So be protected, be safe and in everything that you do may your hands prosper in it and be blessed in it in Jesus Name. Hallelujah. Glory to God. Thank you for coming to church. Hallelujah. Be blessed.
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