Scripture Reference: Exodus 20:1-6 (NKJV); Psalm 127:1-2 (NKJV); Psalm 128:1, 4 (NKJV); Psalm 91:14 (NKJV); Psalm 18:1-2 (NKJV); John 3:35 (AMPC); Matthew 17:5-8 (NKJV); Mark 1:9-11 (NKJV); John 3:16-18 (AMPC); John 5:20-21 (AMPC); 1 John 4:7-11, 19 (AMPC)Pastor Garth:
Father, we thank You for Your presence that is manifest here with us. And we thank You that as Pastor John delivers the word, he delivers the word with boldness, and in the power of Your Spirit. And we have ears to hear and hearts to receive, we declare it in the wonderful Name of Jesus. And we thank You for what you’re doing in this church. We thank You, we thank You, we thank You, in Jesus’ Name.
Pastor John:
Amen. Praise the Lord. God is good. You may be seated. Thank you. Glory to God. Is my folder, Pastor John’s photos? No? Praise the Lord. For me, church never ends. Because for me, church is me. Church is me whenever ‘me’ talks to someone else who is another Christian. And then we are the collective church, otherwise, I’m a singular church. Hallelujah. And the more I worship God, and the more I praise Him, and the more He’s part of my life, the more my church becomes alive, which means me. Hallelujah.
Some significant things have been happening in our ministry. I’ve been travelling, I’ve had some supernatural divine assignments. We’ve taken honour gifts to Brother Jerry. I didn’t feel that I quite got finished last week in what I had to present to you or say to you. And so I trust that I will deliver and say to you what needs to be said today.
I’m not going to read all of the 10 Commandments to you. But I’m going to read the beginning of the 10 Commandments as they are found in Exodus chapter 20, verse one, 1 And God spoke all these words, saying: 2 “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. 3 You shall have no other gods before Me. You shall have no other gods before Me. 4 You shall not make for yourself a carved image—any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; 5 you shall not bow down to them nor serve them. For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me, 6 but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments.” (Exodus 20:1-6 NKJV). And so He goes on to share more of the 10 Commandments.
I, if the Lord is willing, I would like to share with you in weeks to come, Pastor Sharon has some things she has to share but in weeks to come, I would like to share with you that when we come to church on a Sunday, when we talk to other Christians we use the words like God and Jesus and Holy Spirit. And we use words like devil, Satan, we might use words like light and darkness. We might use words like love and hate. We might use a lot of different kinds of words that might reflect what is happening in the church.
At the source of it, you are faced, you and me are faced as individuals with a singular, a very singular, very personal reality. It’s a revelation I’ve had for a long time and I keep referring to it, but it’s because God gave me the revelation that it is so relevant. The singular thing that you and I have to face is do we trust what we see, what we feel, what we touch, what we experience? Do we trust that more than the language that we use called God? So God is a question. Do you trust Him? Do you know Him and do you trust Him? If you have received Him into your heart, and if He’s the Lord and Saviour of your life, you are still faced every day with a singular question; do I trust Him? Because every day you are faced with experience, with emotion, with touch, with sight, with logic, with thoughts, and those thoughts and logic and appetites, feelings that you have in your body, they will constantly, continuously conflict with the trust of God. Because God you don’t see. God is not someone who’s talking to you with an audible voice every day. But your logic speaks to you with a more audible voice than God. And you have to train yourself to listen to the voice of God in your spirit, rather than the voice of your logic.
The more you spend time with your head, inside your head, the more you learn to trust what’s in your head than what’s in your heart. Which is why the Bible says you’ve got to pull down strongholds, you’ve got to pull down those thoughts and those reasonings and those ideals, and those philosophies that raise themselves up against the knowledge of God. Because they happen where? In your head. You’ve got to physically pull them down and say, “I choose not to go with that philosophy, or that thought, or that logic. I choose to go with what’s in my spirit.” Hallelujah.
So, I listened to Pastor Sharon’s message a couple of times that she preached while I was away. So when it came to a moment when I knew that I was spiritually right, in my delegated authority, in the actions that we took with a couple in the church, and yet sat in front of my Pastor, who never ever heard my side of the story, and he said, “I don’t see what you see, John.” I had a choice to make. I had a choice to go with what I even knew spiritually, and what I knew logically, what I knew organisationally – all of these things are incorrect. I had a choice to make whether I go with my head, or whether I go with my spirit. You have to train yourself to go with what’s in your spirit, not what’s in your head. Because your head will always limit you to the natural solution, whereas your heart, your spirit man will always release you into your future. Your head can never create your future, your head can only deal with the logic of the moment. Because the logic of the moment may be able to plan five years ahead, but you don’t know, and nobody knew Covid was coming when they made a 10-year business plan. And so your logic can’t deal with that, but your spirit man can. And if your spirit man is speaking to you and says to you, “Don’t do this, rather stay like this, rather go.” Your spirit man knows more about your future because your future is in Christ, than your natural man. So, when God says, 2 “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. 3 You shall have no other gods before Me.” (Exodus 20:2-3 NKJV). And you shall not even have any creature or any idol that you make that looks like it. So, I shall not go into the rest of it.
The title of my message today is; Beloved. I’ve taken the word beloved out of the word Hebrew and I can’t pronounce it but it refers to a dearly loved one. It refers to a much loved person. In the Middle English period when it was kind of used and created, it refers to a pleasing love, a love that pleased; beloved. I looked in some other dictionaries, other than biblical word dictionaries and the word beloved can mean darling, dearest, precious, adored, much loved. How about this word? Favourite, cherished, treasured, prized, esteemed, worshipped, idolised, or even lionised, highly regarded. So, part of the reason I’m sharing this with you today is because I wanted to talk to you more about the experience that I had with Brother Jerry, and some of the things that I experienced, that has happened to me, and that I observed while I was travelling with him.
So, it’s not a coincidence. Brother Jerry, is a man that has given himself and I need to say this to you. Brother Jerry Savelle is a man who has given himself to travelling around the world, to the body of Christ, churches like ours, around the world. Some of the churches he travels to are much, much smaller than ours because he doesn’t go there for the money. He goes there because God tells him. And so, around the world, Brother Jerry – he also goes to churches that are a lot larger than ours – but he goes where God tells him to go. Brother Jerry has travelled around the world. I think he has said on a few occasions, he’s travelled to more than 5000 churches in his lifetime. Some he has gone back a number of times. He has spent and he has told us that he has spent 22 days of every month on the road, going from church to church, preaching.
One of the conversations we had – I’m not going to go into too much time now – but right in the beginning, we talked about how much time he would spend travelling and living in hotels because they actually travelled to a place and did a three week meeting; him and Brother Copeland, and he was serving Brother Copeland. So, they would either stay in someone’s home but mostly in motels, not hotels. And they just travelled around America, the whole of America. Going from churches to venues, to places to go and preach the Gospel. I ask you, I ask you; do you think such a person is treasured by God? Do you think such a person is treasured by God? What about valued? What about prized? Do you think such a person is adored by God? What do you think about much loved? He calls himself favourite. But surely favourite is because of all these other things. Treasured, esteemed, highly regarded. Would you not say that Brother Jerry is all of those things to the Lord Jesus?
Now, the reason I started with the language is because if I say, Brother Jerry is adored and treasured and prized by the Lord Jesus, and you just use the Lord Jesus in your everyday language, you minimise the connection between adored, and the Lord Jesus. Because if you talk about the Lord Jesus, you depreciate somewhat the adoration that could exist and does exist between Jesus and Brother Jerry, because we just use the word ‘adored’ and ‘Jesus’ too often in the same breath, in the same way that we use any other language. So, I’m trying to bring us out of everyday language. It’s like me saying to Sharon, when I say goodbye to her and say, “Bye babes, I love you, babe.” Now, there’s no doubt that I love her but at that moment I’m not really speaking the fullness of the word, ‘I love you.’ It’s just a greeting goodbye with a feeling that I do have, a sincere commitment that we have to each other. But we’re not tapping into those things when we say, “Bye babes, I love you.”
So, when we have a conversation about the Lord Jesus, and we have a conversation about God and the church and all of that, and we talk about that God loves us and adores us, we have difficulty in evaluating what that means because we use it so loosely. We use it casually. So, when we use it more meaningfully, then it does not have quite the same intensity. So, inevitably, in everyday language, I know that if I say, “Love you, babes. See you later.” I mean, she likes that. We like to use language like that, it’s affirming what we feel. It’s rather than saying, “I hate you, babes. I’ll see you later.” Do you know what I’m saying? You get me? It’s a lot better, it’s scriptural to say it like that. And it’s a whole lot better to use those kinds of words. But I also know that if I want, “I love you, babes,” to have more impact, I need to go stand right in front of her face, look her in the eyes, and let the love speak out of my eyes. Then the words come after what’s in my eyes, what’s in my body language, what I’m speaking to her without saying words. And then, when I’m in her space, and I’m looking her in the eyeballs, and there’s this intimacy without words that now is in existence and I say, “I love you, babes,” it’s much different meaning to the one, “I love you, babes. I’ll see you later.” What we have a tendency to do is that when we connect with God, we connect with, “Hi, God, I said hello to You this morning, and I’ll say hello to You tomorrow. Are You doing all right? I’m doing good. Can I tell You about a few needs that I have, or maybe a few things that I can discuss with You and then I have to rush off to work.” It’s like saying to God, “I love You, God. Bye.” That kind of thing is not what happens with a man like Brother Jerry Savelle, when he’s given his entire life to serving the Lord Jesus and His Church.
Let’s talk about Jesus for a minute. Who do you think Jesus loves the most? Who do you think Jesus loves the most? It’s got to be the Father. Right? Because He came to earth for the Father, because He loved the Father,.Him and the Father are one and because They are one, He loved the Father and did the will of the Father. And of course, the Father loved Him. Because although He could have been equal with God, He didn’t consider Himself to be equal with God. So, He humbled Himself. God honoured Him and promoted Him, and made Him to sit at His right hand and put all things under His feet. The Father and the Son love each other the most, with the Holy Spirit. Agreed?
Who do they love the next best? You and me, the Church, the people that Jesus died for that have received Him as Lord and Saviour. This is important. I don’t want to spend too much time on it but it’s important for me to say that Jesus loves the Church more than He loves the unsaved. Some people will now immediately say I’m speaking heresy. No, I’m not speaking heresy. I didn’t say He didn’t love the unsaved. He loves the unsaved and He has died for the unsaved. His death for the unsaved is equal forever. Do you understand what I mean by that? I mean, He died once and for all for all unsaved forever. That relationship doesn’t change. He loves the unsaved. But those who receive Him, He begins to develop a relationship with. So, He loves the Church more than He loves the unsaved. Go into any Southern Baptist Church in America, and they’ll kick me out for speaking heresies. But I tell you that I can prove it in the Word of God to you that God loves those who keep His commandments. “And if you keep My commandments, and you love Me, you can ask the Father anything in My name and I’ll do it for you.” That’s not the unsaved. I answered you just quickly so that you don’t have to fuss with me too much. You can listen to the rest of the message.
I have to get a little bit biblically technical with you for a minute or two. Please, try and stay with me. Will you? Okay, I’m going to talk first about the Old Testament love and then I’m going to talk about New Testament love. I’m talking about beloved, and I’m talking about Brother Jerry Savelle. So the root word in the Hebrew, again I can’t say it but it sounds like aheb, something like that, that I have no idea how to say it, but you know. It has a very broad range of meanings in terms of the way that it reflects itself, but essentially it reflects itself and it is an expression of passionate love. It’s an expression of love that is identified in passion. There are different ways and different words that come out of the root word of this word in the Hebrew.
The first word I’m going to read to you is a word called yadad. And it comes from Psalm 127, verse two, and it’s a Song of Solomon. I have to read you the first verse because it will give you the context. 1 Unless the Lord builds the house, They labor in vain who build it; Unless the Lord guards the city, The watchman stays awake in vain. 2 It is vain for you to rise up early, To sit up late, To eat the bread of sorrows; For so He gives His beloved sleep (Psalms 127:1,2 NKJV). This word is reflected in the context of what He’s trying to say here. You can build your life, you can build cities, you can watch over your life, you can carefully watch all the progressions of life, you can carefully build everything going on in your life, but it is the beloved who gets sweet sleep. It is not the person who feverishly does all of those other things because those other things are all vanity unless the beloved gives you sleep. And how do you get the sleep? Because you love Him. Not because you can build stuff. Not because you can build your life and you can watch over the walls of your life and you can guide and garden and you can try and do and manage and mix and I’ll do this and do that. Because you’re in His will and He builds the city with you, you get sweet sleep. He gives His beloved; in other words, the loved one who doesn’t passionately build anything, just passionately builds the things God wants him to build.
So if I just built a church for the sake of trying to be a pastor, because I want significance, I’m building in vain. And anything I do in my life because I feel like doing it, because I think I’m right in doing what I’m doing and where’s my marker, my identifying marker of why I think I’m right. I’ll tell you what – a lot of Christians, they look for markers in the Bible that they can prove to themselves that they’re right. But that doesn’t make them right. The way you know you’re right, is that you are beloved. Beloved. So much of what happens when you are a favourite, and you have the love of God in your life, is because you are blessed. I just need to read you, not because it’s one of the words of love, but I need to just read you a little bit of one Psalm. Psalm 128 from verse one, it says, 1 Blessed is every one who fears the Lord, Who walks in His ways. 1 Blessed is every one who fears the LORD, Who walks in His ways (Psalm 128:1 NKJV). I’ll tell you what, if you don’t fear God, you can’t walk in His ways. People often ask me, well, what is the fear of God because it’s also the beginning of wisdom and people want wisdom? And they want to try and surprise you about how smart and how wise they are. Well, my question is, do you fear God? And so you say, “Well, how do I know whether I fear God or not,” is that you actually have a terror that you’re not in the will of God. Some things are absolutely obvious. You should be in fear of God when it comes to tithing. You should have the fear of the Lord when it comes to being at church. And I’ll stop right there for the moment. Praise the Lord.
Verse four says, 4 Behold, thus shall the man be blessed Who fears the Lord (Psalm 128:4 NKJV). So when I’m spending time with Brother Jerry and I have had the pleasure of observing the blessing and the favouritism that is on his life, it’s because what I’ve been sharing with you about the fact that the love of God, in its broadest context is in the Old Testament anyway, it is a passionate love. It’s a love that is reflected in desire. So if you say you love God in the Old Testament, if you say you love God, then the desire for the house of God, the desire, the passion to read the Bible, to meditate on the Bible, the Word of God, to be in the presence of God’s people, to not have idols, to not have other things that you worship, to not put other things before God, that desire should be evident. So, guess what? We’ve discovered the word beloved in Psalm 91. Psalm 91 is, 14 “Because he, come on now. This should help you a lot with people that have used Psalm 91 and then they haven’t always seen the evidence of it. This should help you. Verse 14 says, 14 “Because he has set his love upon Me, therefore I will deliver him; I will set him on high, because he has known My name. 15 He shall call upon Me, and I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble; I will deliver him and honor him (Psalm 91:14-15 NKJV). If you watch a man, where it looks like there’s all manner of trouble that’s come his way but he has set his affection and his desire upon God, there is nothing any human being or any process in the world can stop him from God delivering him and honouring him. The very thing that the world and the devil and the system want to do is dishonourable; God turns that man around immediately to become honourable. You can’t stop it. That’s what happened to me with my pastor. That person who brought an accusation against me, that my pastor ruled against me and judged against me; they immediately required my dishonour. They immediately required trouble to come to my house. But because I love the Lord’s ways more than I love being right, I submitted to the ways of the Lord and in that moment, I recognised that I was in the perfect peace of God. And those people who had brought accusations against me were in big trouble because they had no idea of the God that they were talking about, that was now the God that I always had been serving. And so, I wept for them in that meeting because I understood immediately what kind of disaster was going to come upon their life, and I prayed that it wouldn’t, but it did. But in that moment it was less important for me to be referred to as the honourable one, the right one, the respected one, the one who’s got more power, the one who’s got more clout, the one who’s got more stuff, the one who lives next to the pastor and looks after his son, and who’s got all the influence and so I can do what I want in the church. It was less important for me to be in a place where I was spiritually right. How did I know I was spiritually right? Because everything I said was going to happen, happened exactly like that. It was because I said it was going to happen like that, my pastor remembered my words, and he judged that matter according to what I said and then phoned me and apologised to me for not hearing me. So, what happened to me is that God delivered me and then honoured me. And whatever they tried to dishonour me; they had no handle on me because my life and my love was for the ways of God, not for the ways that I thought were the best.
In fact, if you know me, I’m passionate about accountability. If you know me, all my life I have been passionate about accountability because I watched church politics unfold too many times in front of my eyes as a young man and I saw people’s lives destroyed, including my own parents. And so, accountability is a big issue for me. And so, what was happening is that right at that time, my pastor had no accountability because he didn’t hear what I had to say. So even though I was in a position of responsibility, he was not accountable to anybody. Who is going to question the pastor’s judgement against someone else, if he’s not accountable to anybody else? But God was in the room and God was judging every person’s heart and God was looking at the words that were spoken, and how people’s hearts were turned in that very room. And what was meant for my dishonour, God has turned to my honour, and not only has He turned it to my honour, but He turned it to my honour with my pastor. And so, that was so important because many years later when God wanted to put me into a place where what I knew by God was a message of faith, a message of life, a message of living the ways that God wanted us to live that God connected me with Brother Jerry Saville because of honour. So don’t think that because one or two years goes by and you can look at someone, “Where are they going? What’s going to happen? Yeah, they’re not quite right. You know, they missed it, they missed it badly.” Wait until God’s got His say. In our case, it wasn’t that long but wait till God’s got His say. Because from that time onwards, there were very few people that could hold that pastor in that church accountable for his actions. Very few people in that church could hold him accountable for his actions. But God put me in a place where I could because he knew that my love for God’s ways and his organisational structure was more valuable to me than being right. Hello.
14 “Because he has set his love upon Me, therefore I will deliver him; I will set him on high, because he has known My name. 15 He shall call upon Me, and I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble; I will deliver him and honor him. 16 With long life I will satisfy him, And show him My salvation.” (Psalm 91:14-16 NKJV). Does that not tell you exactly what’s happened to Brother Jerry’s life? Where the devil came after him with his heart, when he came after him with his stroke, when he came after him with everything and the Bible says; because he knows My name, because he loves Me, I will deliver him, and I will honour him. That is the man that God’s connected us with. For decades now.
Now we find another beloved in the Old Testament. I’ve got two more to go. Deuteronomy chapter 33, verses 1-3, says, 1 Now this is the blessing with which Moses the man of God blessed the children of Israel before his death. 2 And he said: “The Lord came from Sinai, And dawned on them from Seir; He shone forth from Mount Paran, And He came with ten thousands of saints; From His right hand. I don’t know if you are listening to this? This is the blessing with which Moses the man of God blessed the children of Israel before his death. “The Lord came…” Come on, the Lord came. Do you read that? … “The Lord came from Sinai. The Lord came. The Lord dawned on them from Seir; so the Lord also came from another mountain and He shone forth from Mount Paran. So the Lord came with all His shinings, And He came with ten thousands of saints; From His right hand. This is not Moses, this is not Moses. … Came a fiery law for them. 3 Yes, He loves the people; All His saints are in Your hand; They sit down at Your feet; Everyone receives Your words. This is what happens with beloved people – people that God loves.
Finally, I read from Psalm 18, verse1. To the Chief Musician. A Psalm of David the servant of the Lord, who spoke to the Lord the words of this song on the day that the Lord delivered him from the hand of all his enemies and from the hand of Saul. And he said: 1 I will love You, O Lord, my strength. Lord my strength.1 I will love You, O Lord, my strength. 2 The Lord is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer; My God, my strength, in whom I will trust; My shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold. 3 I will call upon the Lord, who is worthy to be praised; So shall I be saved from my enemies (Psalm 18:1-2 NKJV). This is a complete reflection of the Old Testament love of God that is revealed in words, in passion, in desire. Amen.
Do you think that the love of God that is expressed that way in the Old Testament disappeared when the New Testament came? On the contrary, what’s in the Old Testament began to reveal itself more fully in the New Testament. So, we should not be holding ourselves back when we come to worship God and we begin to say to Him, “My Lord, my Strength, my Saviour, the One Who has delivered me. When everything seemed lost and gone and there was no place for me, You were the fortress I ran to. You have been my shield. You have been my stronghold. You have been my Shepherd all the years of my life. When I have walked through dark places and I’ve walked through valleys that seemed like the shadow of death was about to consume me, it was Your rod and Your staff that comforted me and walked me through those places, and then raised me up onto the high mountains. You, O God, were the One. You, O majestic heavenly wonderful Being of God that lives passionately in my heart. I declare You are my good Shepherd and You will make a feast before my enemies and create a table for me that is so grand. It is so wonderful to show them how much You lavish Your love upon me because I am Your beloved.”
In the New Testament there are different words of love that are used. There’s a word in the Greek that’s agape, there’s phileo, there’s eros. There are different kinds of words that are used to reflect love. I have to go back to the Old Testament. John 3, verse 35, to reflect the love that is in the New Testament because verse 35 – John 3 verse 35 says, 35 The Father loves the Son and has given (entrusted … ) everything into His hand (John 3:35 AMPC). Maybe I have two messages, it might have actually been the book of John that I am referring to here. Matthew chapter 17, verse 5, this is the New King James version. 1 While he was still speaking, behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them; and suddenly a voice came out of the cloud, saying, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. Hear Him!” 6 And when the disciples heard it, they fell on their faces and were greatly afraid. 7 But Jesus came and touched them and said, “Arise, and do not be afraid.” 8 When they had lifted up their eyes, they saw no one but Jesus only (Matthew 17:5-8 NKJV). Just hear me out here for a minute. God was speaking from heaven and He was saying, “This is My beloved Son.” Beloved One; adored, respected, appreciated, prized, valued – all of the words that I spoke earlier. All of these words are in; “This is My beloved Son.” Passionately loved, Son. 5… Hear Him. Hear Him. I mustn’t get ahead of myself. Just a few more minutes.
Mark 1, verse 9, 9 It came to pass in those days that Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee, and was baptized by John in the Jordan. 10 And immediately, coming up from the water, He saw the heavens parting and the Spirit descending upon Him like a dove. 11 Then a voice came from heaven, “You are My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” (Mark 1:9-11 NKJV). Beloved Son, adored, highly prized, valued, everything. Everything that is passionately reflected in the glory and the love of who God is, is in that statement; beloved Son.
So, I am going to put this slide up now. I am reconnecting. What do I press? Pastor John’s photos? No? No. Ok, where do I find it? Ok, I’ve got it. [Photo of Pastor John, Brother Kenneth Copeland and Brother Jerry reflects on the screen.) I am just going to leave this, I’m not going to talk to this for a moment. 16 For God so greatly loved and dearly prized the world that He [even] gave up His only begotten (unique) Son, so that whoever believes in (trusts in, clings to, relies on) Him shall not perish … but have eternal (everlasting) life. 17 For God did not send the Son into the world in order to judge … the world, but that the world might find salvation and be made safe and sound through Him. 18 He who believes in Him [who clings to … Him] is not judged [he who trusts in Him never comes up for judgment; for him there is no rejection, no condemnation—he incurs no damnation]; but he who does not believe (… trust in Him) is judged already [he has already been convicted and has already received his sentence] because he has not believed in and trusted in the name of the only begotten Son of God. [He is condemned for refusing to let his trust rest in Christ’s name.] (John 3:16-18 AMPC). So this beloved Son, God gave to us. This highly prized, passionately loved Son, He gave to us. Yes? So that we who believe in Him, are now cut off from judgement because we have taken the believing of Jesus as the Son of God. Right?
John five, verse 20, 20 The Father dearly loves the Son and discloses to Him everything that He Himself does. And He will disclose to Him (let Him see) greater things yet than these, so that you may marvel and be full of wonder and astonishment. 21 Just as the Father raises up the dead and gives them life [makes them live on], even so the Son also gives life to whomever He wills and is pleased to give it (John 5:20-21 AMPC). How can Jesus take on such a big responsibility? Come on. How can Jesus take on such a big responsibility? Because He’s the beloved Son. Beloved Son. 7 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God; and he who loves [his fellowmen] is begotten (born) of God and is coming [progressively] to know and understand God (1 John 4:7 AMPC). How do you get to know and understand God more progressively? I just read it. Come on. By loving your fellow man. “Ag, no, but this person irritates the heck out of me.” That’s the space you’re supposed to learn to love him. The easy part is, “I get on so well, we chat so easily. I mean, it’s like, you know, wow, we just like two magnets. Dshhh, we are together. We just hang out so easily.” Well, you’re not going to learn much about love there because you’re just in agreement all the time. Where you learn love is when you don’t see eye to eye and you’ve got to work it out. Why on earth would you take the trouble and the investment and the time to work it out? You take the time and the trouble to work it out because you get to know God in working it out; if you’re brothers. If you’re dealing with someone who’s not a brother, you have got to understand – and I trust I’ll be able to get to this in the weeks ahead – you have to understand that they are ruled by darkness. When you’re talking to people who are ruled by darkness, you must understand that you’re dealing with persons that are spirits and spirits of darkness will deal with the persons that are dark spirits.
When you’re dealing with someone that’s in the world, you’re dealing with darkness, and dark spirits will talk through them. Dark spirits will influence you as much as they can so that you don’t progressively get to know God. The whole world system is geared to design you to keep you in darkness so you don’t get set free from Babylon. So you don’t get set free from the way that the world does things, which is all about connections. Which school did you go to? Which university did you go to? What degree did you get? What connections have you got? What friends have you got? How can you go about things? Because those dark forces have created the system that if you belong there, you can work there. But if you’re the light and you’re outside of that, you don’t belong in the darkness so that you can’t access that system. They don’t want you to access the system because you show them up for what they are; dark, empty vessels that have no life eternally. We think that they are the ones that tell us what our future must look like? Because, “We can think.” And because, “We give ourselves over to whatever expressions or feelings we want to have and we have lots of feelings about a lot of things. And I can identify myself as anybody I want to and who are you to tell me that I can’t?” These people tell me they love God? They don’t love God, they love themselves. They love themselves and they love the dark places. They love dark people because dark people want to continuously perpetuate darkness because they are safe in the darkness. B when light comes and shines upon them, it reveals the darkness they’re living in. So they want to stay away from the light.
8 He who does not love has not become acquainted with God … 9 In this the love of God was made manifest … that God sent His Son, the only begotten [Son], into the world so that we might live through Him. 10 In this is love: not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the … (the atoning sacrifice) for our sins. 11 Beloved, if God loved us so [very much], we also ought to love one another (1 John 4:7-11 AMPC). Verse 19, 19 We love Him, because He first loved us (1 John 4:19 AMPC). We love Him because He first loved us.
So I put this picture up here. Let me take my remote control here so that I can… My message is almost over. So I ask you today, when you look at these men here [Pastor John referring to a picture of Brother Kenneth Copeland, Brother Jerry and Pastor John on the screen], you don’t have to include me. Just look at Brother Copeland and Brother Jerry. I want to ask you, do you think that these are people that God would say, “They are My beloved?” [Congregation answers, “Yes.”] Why would He say, “They are My beloved”? He’s going to say, “They are My beloved,” because all of their lives they have pursued Him. Well, since they both got saved, they have pursued Him. They have pursued love for Him and they have pursued His love that He has for the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ; to train and educate and impart knowledge to the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ, to their own personal sacrifice.
Some people might say, “Well, you know, if you’ve got a couple of jets, you know, what sacrifice do you have?” You have no idea how many hours they spend flying on those jets. You have no idea how many airports they land at, how many cars they get into with people that they don’t know, they drive to hotels where they’ve never stayed. They move and pray and seek God for the message to preach to a group of people they’ve never met. And then, when they’ve finished with that message, they sit around and talk to people that they may or may not have met once in their lives before, or maybe not. Then get turned around and either go back to the hotel or go back to the airport, get on the plane and go straight back home and get home at three o’clock in the morning to start work again at eight o’clock the next morning; and keep doing that and keep doing that and keep doing that. Some people will complain because they fly their own jet, they can’t be men of God. But when you’ve gone and visited and you’ve taken the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ to more than 5000 churches, let’s just say each of those churches had 100 people in them just for argument’s sake. How many people have you now touched? A minimum of a half a million people that have heard the gospel. Up close and personal. It’s normally more than that. If you consider that some of the places where they preach, they preach to 15 000, 20 000, 25 000 30,000 people at a time and you start adding up then you say, well, these men have preached face to face from a pulpit because they could fly there and get there or drive there and get there to 10’s of millions of people. Because they have been passionate about doing the work of God all of their lives. My Beloved, My beloved, My beloved. So, “What happens to My beloved is that he has a desire, My beloved, he just has a desire and I’m God.” And so then, when Pastor John and Sharon are visiting with him, and he has a desire to keep sharing things with us, because he knows that his years are less than we have more years than him. And we are connected spiritually in covenant, and he wants to share things with us. Things that come to you, even if they don’t come in words, they come in spirit. And so when My beloved has a desire, there is the desire. He sends another one who has a passionate desire to serve Him, and to honour the spiritual leader that has meant so much to his life and his ministry. I wouldn’t be here today if I hadn’t heard a message, If Satan can’t steal your joy, he can’t keep your goods. It has sustained me all of my life. I wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t heard a message, Having done all to stand, stand. I wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t heard a message that in the same year he received a hundredfold return harvest. Isaac. That’s the message, Sowing in famine. When I realised that it doesn’t matter what the famine situation looks like in my life, I can still sow and receive a harvest because it’s based on my faith, not the conditions that I am living in. And even now I’m living by that same message that I sow seed, and we do seed not based on the conditions that look like it’s famine, or it’s like this, but we sow seed because the seed creates the life because it’s in the hands of God, because it’s His Beloved. And He bypasses all conditions and all circumstances and all human things to get answers to you. My beloved. Hallelujah. And I know you saw this picture last week, but it’s his now and you made it his. [Photo of Brother Jerry on his new Indian motorcycle]
I want to tell you, that I have become aware of what you can access when you recognise the principle of My beloved. Because when you saw my passion or desire that God put in my heart, that my pastor, my spiritual leader is calling me, my apostle is calling me. He didn’t even know why he was calling me. He just had a, and I got to reading you that from Romans. He just had a desire in his heart to call me. He wanted to be with me. He wanted my presence to be there with him. I like to think this, I like to think that just the same way that King Saul would call David to come and play the harp because he was soothing, it was a soothing anointing when he came and he was in his presence and he worshipped. I like to think that my presence with Brother Jerry soothes him, brings life to him. On the other hand, he imparts life to me. And so in my heart, God put it there. “When you go, he’s not just calling you. He’s not just calling you because he wants you around him. He’s giving you an opportunity by Me, John.” And therefore, all of you because if you’re giving an honour gift, you’re recognising a beloved, a favourite. And when you recognise that you’ve given to a beloved and a favourite, you say, now that anointing comes on me. It’s on me. I receive it on me. I’m going to live as a beloved favourite one. I’m going to live as one that is protected by the Most High God. I’m going to live as one who is beloved. That’s why God put this whole principle in place through Jesus. So that when we, who believe in Him, we become favourites. We become beloved’s. If we will do His word, worship Him, put His commandments in our hearts and live them we become favourites. Beloved, beloved, much beloved. Hallelujah.
Come on, when you are much beloved, many, many, many, I can promise you many people around the world would like to have a picture taken like this. [Pastor John referring to the photo of him, Brother Copeland and Brother Jerry] I’m telling you now there are 10’s and hundreds of millions of people that would want to have a picture taken like this. And it’s not just a pose picture. This is 10 years of serving Kenneth Copeland Ministries and Brother Copeland spending a whole day with him and Brother Jerry. Hallelujah. Come on. Glory to Jesus. I want to tell you something; Pastor Sharon and I are part of that, this is not a faith statement. This is a reality. We are part of the Savelle legacy and we are part of the Copeland legacy. When George and Terry Pearsons saw us at – George was there, Terry wasn’t there – when George saw us at Kenneth Copeland’s Victory Campaign, I mean, he had things to say to us. Many things he wanted to share. Some things he shared with me have absolutely allowed me to look at my own life and ministry, and say, this is – hey, I mean, there’s no encounter that’s just by coincidence.
So when Brother Jerry asked us to stay on for extra days, we made the most of it. So we find ourselves in the Branson Victory Campaign. And there I find myself standing talking to George Pearsons. And George Pearsons is in animated conversation with me about changes that they’ve made to the ministry since I last was around. And how they have done it and why they have done it and how it’s working. And what’s working and I’m listening and I’m saying; coincidence? Beloved, favourite. Some people would say just the right place at the right time. When your beloved favourite, you’re always in the right place at the right time. Hallelujah. Glory to Jesus. Glory to Jesus. Hallelujah. Hallelujah.
Don’t you like to be a favourite? Don’t you like to be a beloved? You see, the Lord spoke to my heart and He said to me, “John, I want you to talk about being beloved,” because we all talk about favourite and so then everybody jumps onto this bandwagon like; I’m a favourite. I’m a favourite, you know, and it’s fine. But when you talk about, I am beloved, then favourite comes with beloved. And it kind of puts it into a bit of context for you that you can’t just say, “Because I’m favourite, I must be a favourite.” No, it’s because I seek Him, I’m passionately desiring Him. I’m after His name. I want to do all the things that He wants me to do. I want to obey Him, I want to follow Him. I want His will to be my will, I want my will to be His will, and I want to just be His beloved. Hallelujah. Glory to Jesus. Hallelujah.
I’ll tell you what, there is a lot of Christians who don’t know that they are beloved, and part of the reason they don’t know it, is because they’re so self-centred in their lives that they don’t say, “Well, I’m going to Heaven, so I don’t have to really love, I rather just live according to the lust of my own desire.” And so then you’re good to go to Heaven, but you’re not good to be My beloved. It’s a big difference, hey? Oh, but I sowed into Brother Jerry, and so I must be able to get his rewards. It’s a bit more than that. Huh? It’s a bit more than that. That’s why the Lord had me preach this message. It’s a bit more than that. Let’s press. Let’s press into God. Let’s give Him everything we have got. Let’s enjoy Him. Let’s press into His presence. Hallelujah.
Won’t you stand with me please? Do you have further insight into why there are just people in the world that love God? Some people, actually, would call Pastor Sharon and I one of those people. There are just people in the world and it just seems like God really just blesses them. Right? And blessings keep overtaking us. You know why? I have given my whole life to following Him. My whole life. My whole life I’ve been pressing into God. My whole life I’ve been seeking what the will of God is for the Church of the Lord Jesus. My whole life I’ve sought and I have delighted myself in Him. And when I met this girl, I saw the same passionate desire for Him, my Heavenly Father. I saw it in her heart. It came out of her mouth, and that captivated me. I mean, she’s gorgeous in every other way. But let me tell you what captivated me was the fact that she just loved Jesus that much, that it matched my passion for Him. When I found my heart was knit to a person who loved Jesus this much. Well, let’s get this thing done for the rest of our lives. And here we are – 42 years later, and we are still passionately serving God, giving our all to Him, giving our lives for Him. Going any place, anywhere, anytime He wants us to go. Hallelujah.
And so, you know, people have this thing, they say, “Well it happens to preachers.” Well, maybe sometimes it’s the preachers that have pressed into God, that God said, “I’ll anoint them as preachers.” Come on. You don’t have to be a preacher to press. When I was in the army, I pressed for God. When I was in business, I pressed for God. And now I’m a preacher, I press for God. And all along the way, I was a favourite because I was beloved.
I really want to close, you know, but you’re all standing now, so this is a nice time to talk, because you’re awake. I remember, when I was a young salesman, and, you know, I was new to selling a particular product photocopier. And I remember the sales manager asked me, you know, where do I think I’m going to end in terms of sales by the end of the year? I said, “Well, I’m going to be the top salesman.” And they looked at me like, “You’ve only been here a couple of weeks. How do you know? What do you know about anything?” And so, they asked me straight out “Why?” I said, “Because I’ve got God on my side.” And this is how I answered them, “I’m blessed going out, and I’m blessed going in. That’s what God promises me, and so, with that kind of blessing, I will be number one salesman by the end of the year.” And I hadn’t sold a single copier yet. But guess what? By the end of the year, I was the top salesman. I wasn’t just the top salesman, I was the top salesman that sold – the distribution channel salesperson who had all other salespeople selling on their behalf – I surpassed her numbers. As one person because I’m blessed. I’m beloved. I was pursuing God. Even in my going to get business, I used His Word, I used His ways, I praised Him, I honoured Him, I glorified Him. And I even put Him on the line with my manager. Put Him on the line. “Okay, God, now I’ve said it. Now You’ve got to make it happen. Because I’m beloved because I serve You with all my heart, and I’m a tither, and I’m a giver. The little bit I’ve got to do right now, I give it anyway.” Hallelujah.
Put your hand on your chest like this. Say, I’m a son of God. Jesus lives in my heart. I am no longer under the control of sin because Jesus lives in my heart. I receive Him as the Loved One. And therefore, I now choose to be a beloved one, to be a favourite one, in the name of Jesus. Hallelujah. Glory to God.
I want to just say, I pray that the blessing of God rests upon you, that no weapon formed against you will prosper. It will not prosper against your life, your relationships, your business. It will not prosper against your health. It will not prosper against any part of your life that might seem like it’s falling apart, I speak life to it right now. I speak rebuilding, restoration, and I speak the rebuilding of God, the refaithing of God into you, in the name of Jesus. Hallelujah.
I ask the Father that His peace will rest upon you, that His peace that passes all understanding will guard your heart against your mind. And so that your mind will not control what’s in your heart, but your heart will control the anxieties of your mind. The peace of God is like a garrison of soldiers against the outside world, in Jesus’ name. Hallelujah.
I speak to your business. If you will agree with me right now, I speak to your business that you favourite, beloved one, and that business begins to flow. The blockages are removed and the business flows. Blockages are removed, and the business flows. Income sources that were not there last week will be there next week. Hallelujah. Financial well-being that wasn’t there last week is going to be there next week. Hallelujah. I pray that your ears will be attuned to hear the opportunities, your eyes will see them. Your mind will be alert to them and that you will receive them spiritually, you will see opportunities that God’s got waiting for you. You beloved ones, you. Hallelujah. You favourite ones, you. Hallelujah. Glory.
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