Scripture reference: Proverbs 9:7-12 (NKJV); John 1:1-5 (NKJV); John 1:14 (NKJV)
Hello It’s good to see you all here, this evening. Hallelujah. Praise the Lord. Are you guys all winners? Hey? So, if you’re winners, then there must be losers. So, who are the losers? So those people that are saying there’s both winners and losers, you’re all wrong. I’m just kidding. Anybody that received Jesus as Lord and Saviour is a winner. There’s no doubt about it. If you have Jesus living in your heart, you’re a winner. Right? Yes. There’s no downside to it. Only an upside to it. Praise the Lord.
So what do you think about the new language that we are using at this moment in time? Is your ear getting used to it now? I trust that you’re in your spirit man, you’re becoming more alive and you’re recognising the Truth for what it is. It’s quite remarkable to me actually, it’s quite remarkable to me that, when God begins to put the Truth of the Word of God together for us, how everything just comes into alignment. There are so many things that get so many we get so many answers and questions just seem to fall away, and you begin to see the big picture of the Truth. Right? Ja ne? Amen? Praise the Lord. Are you still with me? Are you already with me? Are you still sleeping from this afternoon? Have you eaten? Did you not eat? Are you still waiting to eat? Ready? I eat food that you know not of, and neither does my wife. I got a stash in my cupboard. I’m teasing. I know some people that stash eat-s’mores away. It’s just a funny thing, you know. But, anyway, praise the Lord. Praise the Lord. Alright.
We’ve got to talk about, I am got to talk a little bit tonight about success and failure and why we use words like success and failure. Certainly, when we talk about the natural laws and we talk about supernatural or divine laws or natural order of things and supernatural order of things, divine order, if you like. Why there’s even a conversation that you can have that is uses the term success or failure? Are you interested in the subject? You better be because that’s what’s coming at you. Amen.
So, I’m going to share something quite significant to a pastor. It’s significant to anybody actually. But what I’m sharing with you is most often encountered by pastors. As I read the Scripture to you. Proverbs chapter 9 verse 7 says this, 7 He who corrects a scoffer gets shame for himself, And he who rebukes a wicked man only harms himself (Proverbs 9:7 NKJV). What? What? You mean just by bringing correction to somebody can actually get you shame and can harm you because you bring correction to somebody? Isn’t that what the Bible says? Can you read it up there? 7 He who corrects a scoffer gets shame for himself, And he who rebukes a wicked man only harms himself. 8 Do not correct a scoffer, lest he hate you; Rebuke a wise man, and he will love you (Proverbs 9:7-8 NKJV). So, understand now just for a minute, what a wise man is. And I’m going to talk about this and use and make reference to the Scripture over the next couple of days. I’m not the only one who’s got to do all the ministering this weekend, and the Lord has put it on my heart there will be some others ministering and there will be somebody ministering and this is what will happen during the course of the weekend.
But, if you want wisdom, how do you get wisdom? If we’re in the Book of Proverbs, then you will know that the Bible says, “The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom.” Right? So, if I’m going to talk about the Scripture here, he who corrects a scoffer gets shame for himself, and he who rebukes a wicked man only harms himself. So, don’t correct a scoffer because he will hate you. If you just take those three lines, I mean, that’s quite radical. Don’t you think? So, if someone is obviously doing something wrong, if it’s obvious and you go and tell them and say, “Hey, I want to tell you that what you’re doing is wrong.” If they’re a scoffer, they’re going to tell you, “Shut up. Who are you to tell me I’m doing the wrong thing? Who says what I’m doing is wrong anyway? Who are you? I’ll do what I want to do, and I think what I’m doing is right. So, what?” Right?
Because by definition, someone that is a scoffer kind of laughs at you, kind of makes light of anything that you consider to be serious. So, they want to make the decisions for their lives, for their time, for what they want to do, they want to do it themselves. Now let me just be clear about this. This doesn’t reflect a person’s lack of seriousness about life. You can get someone that’s extremely serious about life, but they’ll scoff at you. In fact, most often, it’s the people that are most serious about the way they live that will scoff at you. It’s not about a lighthearted, jesty person, that’s, “I want to go party, I want to go drink. I want to have this kinda fun. I want to go, do that.” You know, those kind of people, they don’t actually care for about wisdom anyway. And they don’t not more normally not, they’re not ready for change. They just want to first do their party stuff and then maybe somewhere along the line, when things go badly wrong, then they might look for some help. Most of the time, it’s people that are quite serious about doing the right things in life that will scoff at you.
So, Pastor John, so why do you start this whole session this evening with such a big matter, such a negative tone? Well, I want you to understand how God has to deal with the human race. Because God is the Continual Perfect State of Being. In Him is perfection. In Him is the very Source of all Life and perfect Life and all of the Order of Life is all in Him. He has, from the beginning, before we existed, you see, because we live in a three-dimensional world, we always need a beginning and an end of stuff. We can’t live in the world of God that is, the best way I can think about it is, like, it’s a linear thing or or it’s, you know, the start and the beginning are the same because He lives outside of time. So we can’t grasp that. But if you could live outside of time and you could see all of time all at once, the beginning and the end of time all at once and everything that happens in between, of course, You’re God, You have a idea of stuff that people are doing on the earth before they even do it on the earth because You’ve already.
So here You are Eternal God and You see everything because everything is in You. And someone actually says, “Hey, I know how to live life. I don’t need Your counsel, God.” That’s a scoffer. “I don’t need Your counsel, God. I don’t need to read Your Bible, Your Word. I don’t need to …. I know how to run my life. I want to run my life the way I want to run my life.” And, so now if God wants to come and correct that person, that person’s got to say what to God? Well, they don’t even got to recognise that God’s trying to say anything because they already scoffed at God.
So God is not got to come and try and bring correction to that person because they’re not serious about God. But the Bible says, that hH has made it clear to everybody that He is God and He’s made it clear through creation that He is God, and He’s made it clear to everybody in their conscience that He is God. So there’s no excuse for any human being that ever lives on the planet that they can leave this planet and say, “I didn’t know about God.” The Bible is clear that everybody that lives and dies on the earth will have known about God through creation and through their conscience. Amen.
So, I know that if God leads us to intervene in someone’s life, and they choose to scoff, it very, very seldom happens to me anymore. It did happen to me in the earlier part of serving people in our lives. It happened to me a few times where I saw somebody in trouble, and then I wanted to go and help them. And then they just wanted to have nothing to do with me, or made it … it didn’t end up badly for me. Why? Because I got shame for myself. It harmed me, and they ended up hating me because I brought wisdom to them. And then later on, they see that my wisdom was the truth, and it’s a problem.
So, I’ll tell you where it happened most often, that it happened to me. It happened to me most often in marriage. And, it got to a point where people would come and sit in my office, and they wanted marriage counseling. Or even when, before I was in the full-time ministry, when I was serving my pastor, my previous pastor, you know. People would come and want counsel for their marriage. And so often, I would say to them, “If you want our help, my help for your marriage, then you got to do what I say. You can’t come and sit and ask me for help in your marriage, and not do what I say.” Because if you don’t do what I say, then there is no point in coming to hear what I have to say. Because if that is the thing, all you’re coming to do is, you are coming here to have your conscience say, “I’ve looked for a solution, but then I haven’t found one.” So then you can separate, you can do whatever you can do because you went for help.
So people would come and ask me for help. And I’ll tell you, many, many, many times, many times, people, I’ll tell them what to do, they wouldn’t do it. They will come, maybe back a second time, and then I’ll ask them, “Have you done what I said to you?” “No, because of this, or no but that, or no but well…” “Go and do what I told you, first time, and then come back again.” And most of the time, they never came back because they weren’t prepared to do what I told them to do. And so you would say, “Well Pastor John, well who are you?” Well, I’m not anybody, particularly. I’m certainly at that time, most of the time, I was a leader in my pastor’s church then. But the reason people sought us out is because our life spoke. Our marriage was a testimony. It was speaking to people and people around, they wanted to have the quality of the relationship that we have. And they, most of the time, they had troubles in their marriage. So they wanted to come and find out how can they do it better, different.
So if you tell a person to do something, and they don’t do it, then they end up becoming scoffers or mockers of God. Because if they don’t do, if we, you, even you and I, if we don’t do what God’s Word says, we mock God. Aren’t we? Because He is giving us Truth and we say, “Thank You for the Truth.” But actually, we’re not interested in doing the Truth. And so the Bible says, “God’s not mocked.” What you sow is what you will reap. This is a guarantee of life. God says, “I will not be mocked.” If you reap to the flesh, you will, from the flesh, reap death and destruction. If you reap to this, if you sow to this sorry, why did I say reap? If you sow to the flesh, you will, from the flesh reap, death and destruction. If you sow to the spirit, you will, from the spirit, reap life. And God’s not mocked. This is what’s going to happen.
So, I am continually pressing in. And, you know, if anybody’s traveled with me, if anybody’s been around me for any time, they will, you will all know I’m always coming to you with a Scripture. I’m always coming to you, including a conversation about Jesus. I’m always, I’m always including God in everything I do. Always. I am always praying. I’m always speaking. I’m always thanking God. I’m always doing, I’m constantly aware of God in my life because He is my Lord. He is my Lord. He is my Master. He is my Saviour. He’s not relegated to half an hour or fifteen minutes in the morning, and when I’m done with that, then the rest of the day is mine to live the way I choose. I’m constantly in contact, constantly in communion, constantly in fellowship with God.
Well, Pastor John, how do you get that? As imperfect as I am, I’m also just as perfect. Because I am in a Continuous Perfect State of Being in my spirit. So my imperfection can only be in my thinking and in my humanity, my flesh. So if I say, “Hold on a minute.” I’m not contacting God because of how perfect my thinking is. I’m not contacting God because how perfect my humanity is. I’m contacting and speaking to God from my spirit, then I no longer have to worry about the filters of my soul and my body. I’m speaking spirit to spirit. Come on.
Now, when this happens, then I’m not scoffing at God. I’m taking everything that God shares with me, seriously. Right? So I read that Scripture to you because as a pastor, many times I see people making decisions and doing things in their life, and I can see things are about to go wrong, things can go wrong and, I say nothing. Why would I say nothing? Because I don’t know if I share something with you whether I’m going to get shamed or hated and harmed. So, I’m careful. I’m careful when I talk to people. I don’t just offload on people. Hey? I don’t, I don’t just come into your life and offload on you. Anybody who knows me knows that I don’t just come into your space and say, “Hey. I see something wrong here. You better fix that.” Hey? No. If there’s any way that God deals with us, it’s through relationship where you can begin to see, “Wait a minute, I see who Pastor John is. I see what he’s all about. There’s a trust bridge that’s been created here, and I want him to help.”
Now if you come and ask to speak, then I’m going to speak. And I believe and ninety percent, more than that, most of the time, what will happen is, I will look to the Spirit, Continuous Perfect State of Being, that is inside of me, that is speaking to God, that works through my gift that He placed on me, that will minister to you. Amen. There have been times in my life where my soul has interfered. If my soul interferes with the way that I talk to people, I would rather apologise to you than appear to be perfect. Because I know that if I apologise to you, if I got something wrong, then I’m in a better condition and you’ll be in a better condition because we’ll recognise the humanity that’s involved. So our Continuous Perfect State of Being, our spirit man can receive the next truth. But if we let other things interfere with us, then we can’t, then we let those things stop us from having truth. Hallelujah. And so that’s why the Word of God has to be our guide all the time. The Word of God has gotta be our plumbline. The Word of God has gotta be where we go to all the time because the Word of God was from the beginning in Him. Let’s read it. Let’s read it so we can, we can get the fullness of it. Hey, Sunellie. What do you say? You like this stuff? I can see it in her face, you know.
1 In the beginning was the Word. In the beginning was the Continuous Perfect State of Being. And the Continuous State of Being, the Word, was in the Continuous State of Being, and the Word and the Continuous State of Being and the Continuous State of Being. 2 He was in the beginning with God, who also is a Continuous Perfect State of Being. 3 All things were made through Him, the Continuous Perfect State of Being, and without the Continuous Perfect State of Being, nothing was made, that was made (John 1:1-3 NKJV). So, in Him was the beginning of everything because The Continuous Perfect State of Being decided that all of everything else that must be made from Him to be continuous like Him. That’s why the universe can’t stop expanding. Because when He said, “Let it be,” it came out of a Continuous Perfect State of Being, and it just, there it is.
You know, mankind is like, kind of quite boggled with the universe because, you know, we’ve become .… we think we’re so smart as a human race, you know, because we can see the whole planet’s system. We even know that we have our own galaxy, and then we know that there are galaxies beyond our galaxy, and that’s about what we know. Right? And we think we’re so smart. And the fact of the matter is this, that the Continuous Perfect State of Being decided this is the way it should be, so He spoke it into being, and it continues to be. And all of it is still in Him. Because there’s nothing that is outside of Him that came from Him that wasn’t already in Him. So, if He spoke the universe into being and it is still growing at the speed of light, that’s still always in Him. How big is He? How great is He? So, ⁴ In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. ⁵ And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it (John 1:4-5 NKJV).
So, I go back to my Scripture in Proverbs when I said to you, don’t try and give some counsel to a scoffer because a scoffer will look at what I’ve just read now and say, “But, hey, what do you know about God?” These are just words that are written by men. So these words that were written by men, they were just written by men, so they can’t be that great because it’s just some man thinking about God. Well, I can also do that. That means they don’t know anything about the Holy Spirit. And because they don’t know the Holy Spirit and they’ve never actually opened their hearts to the Holy Spirit, then they don’t have the truth in them, so they would look at it as just another philosophy, another argument.
So, if you try and correct such a person, there’s no way to correct them. I tried. Yo. I had lots of time in the army, you know. I did. Guys used to come and, you know, talk to me. I mean those days we had no tv’s. We had no cell phones. The best thing we had was radios, and then you had Flying Squad on a Friday night. Many of you don’t even know what I’m talking about. I know you know, my babe. They prowl the empty streets at night and fast cars, squad cars. Those were the programs we had to listen to on radio for entertainment on a Friday night.
So, if you’re in the army, you know, you don’t wanna know about squad cars because that means what to you? So what would end up happening is the guys would have the radio on and they’d have cards out on the beds or whatever, and they’d be smoking and drinking. This is what you would do in the army on the Friday night, on the weekend, Saturday night. So then, of course, the guys have a couple of shots. Then they wanna talk about God. True thing. They always, the guy that’s not drinking, we want to know why you’re not drinking. “Why are you not drinking?” “Well, I don’t want to.” “Well, why don’t you and you want to drink?” “Well, because, what I read in the Bible is I’d be foolish if I’d be drinking.” “So no, but no, no, no, come on. The Bible says …..” They got ….. they know all the Bible. Like, you can have wine for your stomach and you so I’m telling you, they know all about it. They all know. They grew up in church, but.
“So why don’t you drink?” We also know that …. most of them, we know even our dominies, most of them, and even our priests drink. Why you don’t want to drink?” They always want to talk about God, and they want to know why I live my life the way I live my life. And then we would have debates. About this and about that. No. No. No. No. Tot in die aand laat in die aand. Those days, I was drinking Coke, and they were drinking Coke and brandy. Until I had too many Cokes and I couldn’t sleep from the sugar. Anybody who went into the army in our lives, you know, say, some of the best years you had in your life, you never want to have them again. But, no, I had lots of debates with guys that were really considered themselves to be highly intellectual and very thought provoking in the way that they went about stuff and then when I went into the corporate world, I had people that had degrees and second and third degrees and, of course, my light would shine. They would connect with Pastor Sharon and I when we had events, corporate events, especially when they would be celebrating and handing out awards, and most of the time, God blessed me enough when I was either the top achiever in sales or I was the top achiever in management or I was getting some special award for something because God blessed me. He blessed my life.
So, then we would go there and, you know, everybody wants to know and they see our lives and they … “How do you do this? You’re a successful Christian. Christians are not supposed to be successful.” And if they are, you know, they live these two different lives. They live a life where their life normally, their marriages are falling apart, and they’re highly successful in business. But there’s always this problem with Christians. So when they saw a successful Christian life they blew their minds. Hey? Because they have a way they have a measure of they’ve they want to measure success.
So for them, the measurement of success is normally money. It’s either money or its influence or its power. And, normally, it’s a combination of those three. So we are all designed to have and need to have control, power, dominion, dominate, dominion. Well, where do you think it comes from? The Continuous Perfect State of Being. Do you think He’s in control? Do you think there’s anything that surprises Him? Do you think He’s the biggest Influencer in the universe? I think so. I think some presidents and some politicians don’t think so. They think, literally, when they sit down, the sun goes down. Come on, I said that nicely. Pastor Sharon’s really tickled by that. But it’s true. It’s true.
I mean, they literally think that everything begins and ends with their opinion and the way that they can manipulate forces to their benefit and to others. I mean, you know, in Africa, there’s been many, many stories of corrupt dictators or people that were voted into power that would never let go of, and they rigged every election after that so that they could stay in power. Our neighboring country did that. Mugabe stayed in power for, what twenty, I don’t know, something twenty five years or something? Twenty four years? Fourty years. Nee magtig man. Fourty years. You think people voted him for fourty years, they voted for him to stay in power with all of that nonsense he did? No. But he thought that the universe is centered around him and he wanted it to center around him, so he tried to manipulate and do everything he could. If he didn’t have Jesus as Lord and Saviour in his life, literally when he died and sat down, the world did go down in his life. And there are many, many, many people in the world that want to control the world, but they are scoffers. They are scoffers at God, and when wisdom is made evident to them, they don’t think that God’s wisdom has got any value or there is any necessary other than what is immediately, politically, or financially or with any power broking of any value to them.
So I don’t want to be measured. I don’t want to be measured about whether I’m successful or not. I’m not saying I won’t be measured. I have been measured in my life whether I’m successful or not. Because, inevitably, if you are measured as being successful, then there’s a couple of things that people are measuring you by. And so, normally, it would be money or it would be the display of money or it would be the lack of the display of money, or it would be, level of influence. It might be a whole different things of how people will measure you. So they try to measure Jesus’ life. You know that? They constantly try to measure Him. And they always try to measure Him, because they said, “Who gives You the authority to speak like this? Where do You get Your authority from? What gives You the right to speak these kinds of words?” And He would always refer to the Father. He always referred to the Source, bearing in mind that He was there in the beginning. He made everything happen in the beginning, and these people say, “Who are You?” I mean, Jesus anytime I mean, I think the devil was always just trying to have a go at Him through people because, at any time, He could have said to a couple of angels, “Hey, just come and stand next to Me. Just slow down a little bit into human time and let them see Who You are.” And if He did that, then it would have been maybe a thousand angels that would immediately just appear for Jesus because He said so, and they would have got the biggest skrik of their lives. Hallelujah. Hallelujah.
I have to be careful of how much I share with you all at once. Except I’m going to use this Scripture and from verse 14, and it says, 14 And the Word became flesh, the Continuous Perfect One, the Continuous Perfect One. Right? The One that’s Continuously Perfect and always in a State of Being. He 14 … became flesh and dwelt amongst us, and we, the Bible says, we beheld His glory. We could see the glory of the Eternal One in our eyes, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth (John 1:14 NKJV). And so in our lives, we got to walk in a way that is full of grace and truth. Amen. Grace and truth. Hallelujah. Thank you, Jesus.
So I don’t want to be found to be one of those that are scoffing. I just wanna read this Scripture to you here. It’s in Proverbs again. Proverbs 9 verse 10, 10 The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, And the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding. 11 For by wisdom, by wisdom, me your days will be multiplied. And years of life will be added to you. 12 If you are wise, you are wise for yourself, And if you scoff, you will bear it alone (Proverbs 9:10-12 NKJV). Now I don’t know about you, but if I want to have added years and I wanted to have a quality of life, I think I would want wisdom to be part of my life. Yes?
So, I’ve been using different language to purposely shift our thinking. Because if I was going to speak to you in the way that we normally speak language, then I would go and I would speak to you about, the Kingdom of God has come, or the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand. And I would use language that we’re always used to, and if I said, “The Kingdom of God is at hand, the Kingdom of God is among you.” And, I began to talk about this kind of language, you would hear it, but you’re not going to hear it. Because you’re so used to hearing it that you’re filtering it through your consciousness. So because you want to say, “Well, I actually want to get to the next Truth that you’re saying because I know that one.” So the Holy Spirit has been on me to say, “Change the language so that you can get the revelation of this Truth so that you can live in this Truth more fully.” Because, actually, this is quite important for us as Ecclesia. Okay?
So we have another day tomorrow. Praise the Lord. Aren’t you glad that we have another whole day tomorrow and we got Sunday, and we can really get into some of this stuff and really find out what God’s got to say to us? Hallelujah. So if you start to do a study, and I would encourage you, after this weekend, you begin to go and read your Bible and choose a Book, Matthew, Mark or Luke, but I would say choose Matthew or Luke because they’re more comprehensive. And just see how many times Jesus talks about the Kingdom of God or the Kingdom of Heaven. And you will find out that actually, Jesus did not come to preach about being born-again. He came to preach about the Kingdom. So if I had to put it in our language, I would say he came to preach about the Continuous Perfect State of Being One, the Continuous Perfect State of Being that has come from Heaven to be on earth.
So now if you hear what I’m saying to you, then I’m saying this to you, is wisdom available to you? Where does your wisdom come from? It’s going to come from the Word of Wisdom that was with us from the beginning, that has become flesh and dwelt amongst us, the Word that was in the beginning, the Continuous Perfect One that ever has been, always will be, never, ever, changing, that One came and dwelt amongst us so that He could reveal the Father to us, And reveal what the Father has got for us. So then I can tell you that the beginning of wisdom would be to be fearing God. So what is it that you’re going to fear God with? You’re going to say, if He’s the Continuous Perfect State of Being One, has got all the answers, then my fear is I have access to that, but I choose not to access that. So then whatever choices I make that’s not accessing that, is foolishness.
So, the fear of God is making your own decisions without knowing what the Continuous Perfect State of Being One says you should do. When you begin to think like that, you begin to have wisdom. Why must I make a decision for myself that I think is by myself, to myself, with myself, when I can actually go to the Continuous Perfect State of Being One and the Source of everything that He does, everything that He says, everything that He makes available to me. And if I can get that information from Him, then every choice I make has got His backing, and it’s going to turn out, same way. Okay.
So, I’ll talk a little bit more about this tomorrow, but let’s talk about what blessing is. If the Continuous Perfect State of Being says, “I bless you.” What’s He doing when He says, I’m going to bless you? He’s saying, “If you are going to obey Me.” And you’re got to follow commandments, He’s saying, “All of Who I Am is coming upon your natural world that is around you, and it cannot but obey Me to come into the Order of the Continuous Perfect State of Being.” Do you understand what blessing is? Blessing is God’s command that everywhere you go, everything you do, wherever you’re going, the Continuous Perfect State of Being is already there preparing, making your way, doing everything so that it turns out to be a continuously perfect state of being for you.
So then if the Bible talks about anti-blessing and talks about curses and anti-blessing, then what I would say to you is that if you’re walking through life and you … the Continuous Perfect State of Being His Order is not with you, you’re walking into disorder. So, then people … then the Bible says, you are cursed with a curse because you haven’t done what you need to do and acknowledging, honouring and recognising the Continuous Perfect State of Being Who has given you everything. So, if the Bible says you’re cursed with a curse, it’s saying, wherever you go, disorder and lack and poverty and everything is got to follow you there because that’s the condition of everybody and everything that happens.
So, you say, some people might say, “But, you know, Pastor John, there’s a lot of really rich people on the earth and they’re not cursed.” You don’t think wealth can be a curse? They might think that they’re blessed. They’re not. They live in so much fear, they’re trying to control everything, even death. And they’re doing everything they can to try and live outside of space, our atmosphere, because if you’re got to live outside of our atmosphere, there’s a possibility that you would age slower. You think Elon Musk is just wanting to go and live on Mars because it’s for the best of humankind? He has no personal agenda attached to that? Well, Praise the Lord.
That’s all I can say is, “Praise the Lord.” For a very long time, people have tried to assume the the identity as God, take the place of God, wanted to be God. They wanted to, but, you know, wealth is not is not everything unless you’ve got God. Even so, come on, guys if you wanna know about somebody that’s really wealthy that’s also very unhappy, just go and read the Book of Ecclesiastes. Just go and read the Book of Ecclesiastes, and you’ll find out that he, I mean, he got a lot of things he has to say about life. In the end, he says, “Vanity, vanity. Everything is vanity.” He talks about a man and a woman’s love. He talks about the sun and the moon, and he talks about earth and the harvest time and earth and talks about this, and in the end, he says, “Everything is vanity. Nothing means anything. It’s all about God.” Then he says, “I’ve pursued all of this stuff. I spent my life pursuing this, pursuing this, ahh.” And he had wisdom. He asked God for wisdom, and God said, “I’ll give you wisdom and then your wealth will come because of wisdom.” And all of that, and he still was unhappy.
And he built the biggest, richest, most magnificent temple that ever existed in humankind. There’s never been a temple that’s been more amazing than that, and he was still unhappy. You know why? Because if you’re not, if you’re not connected to the Continuous Perfect State of Being One, then, actually, what you’re doing is just all about what you can do for yourself. And God wants to be part of everything that you do. He wants to be part of everything that you and I do. And not only does He want to be part of everything, He wants to be part of every time we come together. Isn’t the Bible say, “Where two or three come together He is in the middle of them?”
So it’s almost like He’s with you always, and then when two or three come together, He’s also there. It’s like He’s always wanting to be in on it. He wants to be in on everything you’re doing in your life. He’s really interested. And you’re saying, “But God is God. He’s got so much on His plate.” Listen. There’s new stars being born every second. Think He doesn’t know about you? And you think, “Well, you know, that’s a bit big to think about.” Duh. If you could think about it, then you would be God, and I’m sorry to say you’re not. We think we’re quite smart sometimes, but, actually, we’re a little bit, skeef. Praise Jesus.
So wisdom, wisdom is God’s order at work. Wisdom is God’s order at work. So, I’ve got to just let you understand this tonight so that as we speak tomorrow, that this will cause a foundation for us. Because if wisdom is God’s order at work, you need to understand that the Continuous Perfect State of Being wants to make it known to you what His will is. He doesn’t want to hide His will from you. He wants to make His will known to you. And so how does He make His will known to you? His will comes in the form of wisdom, comes in the form of His Word that you live out His Word, and then it becomes wisdom. Amen. Hallelujah.
So let’s take something as an example. I just wanting to show you what wisdom is, how wisdom works. Remember, I mean, this is a grand story for our ministry. It’s really a grand story for our ministry. But I mean, Brother Jerry, he was going to come, then he didn’t come. And we took six months of offerings up for him, and we had it in the bank account, and then he didn’t come. And then the Lord said, “Doesn’t matter that he didn’t come, John. Take this money and go give it to him.” And remember, I still even had a conversation with the Lord about it and say, “Lord, I don’t know that we give it to him. I’ll send it to him.” And the Lord said, “No, you going to take it to him.” And I fussed with the Lord about that because I said, “I’m got to spend money taking to him that I could give him.” And the Lord said, “No, but I want you to go and take it to him.” You remember all of that? Jah.
So, I don’t have the full picture here, but I’m connected to the Continuous Perfect State of Being and His whole mindset is, “John, it’s got to cost you money to go there that’s not what I’m after, don’t worry about the money, I’m after something much bigger than this and I need you to go take it.” “Okay. Yes, Lord.” Pastor Sharon and I got on a plane, we went to America. We went and we took money and go and gave it to Brother Jerry. Remember what the words were that the Lord gave me for us to do, why are we going to do this? Irrational honour. So everybody that’s in this ministry, we have a high level of, we do, we have a high level of honour in this ministry. Not just honour from you to me, we have an honour code amongst us. We live honourably with each other. Don’t we? I mean, I’m not saying that there aren’t moments where people can fuss with each other. Let me put it a different way. I live honourably with my wife. That doesn’t mean to say that I don’t have some disagreements with her and that sometimes things can get a little tense, that’s about as harsh as it gets around us nowadays. Maybe just a little tense for a few moments. Thank you, baby. But we live honourably with each other and in our ministry, for the most part, we live honourably with each other. When most of the time, if people can’t integrate with the honour code, they might find it difficult to be amongst us. But if they come in and they want to live amongst us, they will live with an honour code. An honour code is much bigger than a loyalty code because gangs can be loyal to each other. An honour code that God institutes recognises that the Author of life is in you is also in me, and He demands that we have honour for each other. Amen.
Where do you think it came from? It came from because we sowed seed as an irrational honour seed, and that seed continues to speak. Because what we did is we accessed the Continuous Perfect State of Being, the Order, His Order of doing things, His way of doing things. And because we access His Order and His way of doing things, that Order now becomes part of us. It’s wisdom. Because I have more knowledge of what honour is now and how you can walk in honour, wisdom now guides my life.
So, if I want to choose a way of behaviour, now I know what honour looks like. I know what it feels like because I know what it looks like. I know what it feels like. I know when dishonour is at work and I don’t even, not necessarily have to see a behaviour pattern and have it be in my face, but I can feel what dishonour feels like. Because dishonour is not just about words, I can have good words in front of you, but I can still dishonour you.
Where did that come from? It’s because I got connected. We all are connected to the Continuous Perfect State of Being. In Him is honour because the Father honours the Son, honours the Holy Spirit, They honour each other. That’s where honour began. It’s the originator of what we call honour and so we live with wisdom. Now we know how to live with honour. And so how does that play out amongst us? The way it plays out around us is, don’t talk bad about each other to each other. I mean, the iXchangers will know, we’re quite big on that. Don’t have words. Don’t have words about somebody else in the office or someone else’s around. Don’t have negative words and have bad words to say about someone. Don’t do it. Why not? Because you’re going to dishonour that person. If you dishonour that person, it’s going to not end well because honour is the way we live in this ministry now because we sowed seeds into honour. Hallelujah.
So, I can say that probably one of the reasons why God could speak to me about that level of honour is because of the way that I have lived in obedience to God in many areas of my life with honour. I have a need …. the Holy Spirit just reminded me. I was in the car this afternoon coming here, and the Holy Spirit just reminded me to share a testimony with you, and then I’m going to close the service.
I was speaking to Joe McCroskey yesterday, and, you know, he loves to phone me. He loves to phone me when it’s Texas time. He loves to phone me early in the morning. I mean, he’s done it with me so often that I know. He gets up in the morning, and he goes and he makes a nice cup of coffee, hot coffee in a flask that’s yay big. [Pastor John indicates how big the flask is with his hands]. He says, “Oh, no. I only have two, three coffees a day, John.” But they’re, like, yay big. We have a laugh about it.
So, he makes himself a nice pot of coffee in the morning, and, if it’s cold, he won’t go and sit out on the patio. He’ll sit in his little lounge there. If it’s in between weather, like, it’s sometime now, this time of the year, it might not be that cold in Texas. It might be getting nice and warm in the mornings. He’ll go and sit on his enclosed patio veranda thing on a rocking chair there and he’ll phone me. I can picture him. I know the sound of his voice. I know so many things I won’t share those details with you here. “Hello, John.” “Hey, Joe. How’s it going?” “Great.” He wants to have a chat about stuff, and we got to be there in a couple of weeks and President’s Cabinet, stuff like that, and we’re just talking about some arrangements and things like that. And then I hear Joyce in the background. So, normally, he makes Joyce some coffee too, and then she gets up after him. Sometimes they’ll be together on the patio when he calls me. I can hear Joyce.
Next minute, Joyce says to Joe, “Hey, Joe. Tell John about JD.” That’s their youngest son. He’s living in Montana. Now I want to tell you something that’s really special to me and to Pastor Sharon. She doesn’t even know yet. I haven’t told her the story yet. So, about, I don’t know, must be seven, eight years, maybe ago, maybe ten years ago, the Lord said to us, “Every time you go to America and you go to Texas, you must give a seed into Joe and Joyce’s sons’ life, a financial seed.” So, they’ve got James and JD or Jonathan. So, they got two sons. And so, every time we would get into Texas, and normally it would be twice a year, we would give significant seed to them. We would put it in envelopes. No words. First time we did it. We did it, the very first time we did it, we asked Joe and Joyce if we could see the boys, because I wanted to tell them what God wanted us to do.
So, it was many years ago, and we went to one of their boy’s home and we sat there and we we had a meal with them and we gave them an envelope each and we said, “We just want you to know that God has spoken to us, that God wants to use us to sow a seed into your life, and this seed will keep coming until God tells us to stop. And we don’t know how long that’s going to be, but it’s going to keep coming until God tells us to stop.” And we don’t know how long that’s got to be, but it’s got to keep coming until God tells us to stop. We’ve been doing it every year, probably twice a year for the last ten years, I’d say it’s about ten years, into their sons’ life in America. So Joe says to me, he said, “John, I wanna tell you what’s happened to JD.” He says, now JD went through a very, very, very bad stage in his life. That’s all I can say. Very bad. Very, very bad. But he’s been married a few years now. He’s got a couple of kids.
He says, I wanna tell you what happened to JD. Now JD moved to Montana because he got made an offer to be the dealer manager, general manager of a dealer of a Harley Davidson dealership in Montana in a city called Billings. He says, “I wanna tell you about JD.” He says, “JD had an encounter with God while he was hunting.” He said, “We don’t know exactly what happened, but he was out there hunting and he came back, and he was a different man and suddenly, he started to call me, and he said, “Dad, can I have these tapes? Can I have this? Can you send me this? Can you send me this? Can you send me that?’” He says, this JD is a completely he said, “All the years, we’ve been praying, me and Joyce, that he would be on fire for God. It’s happened, John. It’s happened. He’s on fire for God.” I said, “Yes, Joe. I said, don’t care what we talked about the rest of it? This is the best news I’ve heard in a long time.” We rejoiced and celebrated together on the phone. Hallelujah.
See, we tapped into wisdom. Wisdom said the Continuous Perfect State of Being said, “John, I want you to be my channel into the earth because there’s a faithful servant who’s been serving my faithful servant for fourty years or thirty five years.” Whatever it is, when I started when we started doing that and their sons have had an impact because of people that have been disloyal in the ministry, and they walked away from ministry life. So because we didn’t put any demand on the relationship, it was the most amazing thing. Every time we’d go there, I’d give Joyce two envelopes sealed, you know. They don’t know always how much money we gave them. They would make sure that the boys got it. The one son would always send me an email. The other son sometimes would send me an email. “Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you.” I wasn’t looking for anything. This is just being obedient to God. I wonder, I wonder, I wonder if our obedience here hasn’t done stuff, maybe.
That’s what God told us. We said they’re going to be restored back to God because the ministry that affected them, our seed was going to be a love seed that would speak beyond organisation of church. It will speak at a relational level because I had no vested interest in them. Do you understand what I’m saying? I wasn’t trying to build it. I mean, when we go to America, hardly ever I mean, aside from when they were little boys, that’s how long we’ve been involved with Brother Jerry when they were young, not even teenagers yet when we got to know them. In those early years, aside from that time when they would always be around there, we didn’t really get to know them and spend time with them as they were growing up in life. Yes, we would see them from time to time, but we didn’t get to know them much. But when God gives us an instruction, then we must obey. Hallelujah.
So, I’ve got to tell you the story. Brother Jerry and Joe are in Canada. Brother Jerry says to Joe, “Joe, …” No, I’m not going to say that. No. He ends up wanting to buy a new Harley Davidson. So he said and long story short, they got their wires mixed up with what the Harley actually was. Ended up, wasn’t this one, but it was a different one, and Brother Jerry wanted a different one. So Joe calls JD. JD gets onto the blower, sorts some things out with Harley Davidson. Next minute, he organises the deal and there’s a $1,000 commission in it for JD because he did the deal. So JD decides to reduce the price by $1,000 so he could sow that into Brother Jerry’s life. This is huge. Hey? This is huge. Brother Jerry takes ownership of the motorbike. Brother Jerry goes to Joe. They’re now organising to have the bike transported from North America to Texas. So Brother Jerry and Brother Joe, they get back to Fort Worth and Brother Jerry says, “Joe, I’ve got this Harley Davidson.” It’s got 12,000 miles on it or something like that. That’s not a lot of miles. It’s got 12,000 miles on it. He says, “I don’t ride it anymore.” It’s like this and it’s like that. He says, “I’ve got it in my heart, I want to give it to JD. So, why don’t we send our trailer up there to where the bike is? Take this one to him, and let’s bring the new one down to me.” He gave a $1,000 seed to Brother Jerry, and he’s got a, let’s say it’s a $10,000 bike in the space of a couple of weeks. JD gets on the blower to his dad or Joe phoned him to tell him what was going on, he says, “Dad, this is a quick working seed, wasn’t it?” Hallelujah. Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord.
You see, when I talk like this, people think I’m talking about money. But I’m talking about a much, much bigger thing than money because the Continuous Perfect State of Being One, He existed before money happened between men. Right? Before money existed, He was there. Before money existed, He made the earth with all the gold and the silver and all the riches in it, and the Bible says everything belongs to Him. And now He’s put all of us on the earth, Continuous Perfect State of Being One is in our spirit. So then, seek ye first the Kingdom of God, and all these things get added to you. Why? Because when you live in that Continuous Perfect State of Being, in His mindset, in Him, with Him all the time, you just know it’s coming. You just know it’s coming. You just know it’s coming. Hallelujah.
I’m looking for a seed. Grobbies, that’s a very nice pink shirt. Can I have it? I’m having some fun. Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord. You see, I mean, if we have this perspective about the Kingdom of God, then we’re accessing a whole way of thinking about things, whole way of conversation, and a whole way about doing things that is so different to the way the world expects to live because the world is so limited into what they can control. And God says, “I want you to have control, but you’re going to have it through the Continued Perfect State of Being that is going to continuously help your life be in a state of perfect being. So if you’re living in a Continuous Perfect State of Being in your life, then you don’t lack anything because how can you live in a Continuous Perfect State of Being in lack? How can you live in a Continuous Perfect State of Being and your relationships are falling apart? How could you live in a perfect state of being and be sick all the time? It’s all in Heaven, and we got to, “Thank You, Father, as it is in Heaven, let it be on earth.” Let’s start with us. Let’s start with us. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Praise Jesus.
I mean, just taking Brother Joe, just taking his kids as an example, you know. You know, I’m part of that story. Sharon and I are part of that story. Eternally, we will get into Heaven and JD and James and Jonathan, they will go into Heaven and they’ll say, “Thank you. Thank you.” And there’s a memorial growing in heaven because of our obedience. Just on that one thing, never mind all the other stuff, but just on that one thing. It’s working. Hallelujah.
I’m so glad that God doesn’t have a poverty mentality. He doesn’t actually understand poverty. Poverty is a human condition that doesn’t exist in heaven. The only reason it exists on earth is because people on earth think they are no better than God, and so then it ends up with poverty. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Praise Jesus. Praise Jesus. Praise Jesus. Thank You, Lord. Thank You, Lord. Thank You, Lord. Praise Jesus.
So, over the next couple of sessions that we’re going to be talking about, we’re going to talk about I think, I think already there’s a lot of pennies that are dropping for you. Right? There’s a lot of coins that are beginning to drop for you about what God wants for life. Because, if you understand Who He is and what He sent Jesus to do and the kind of life that the church is supposed to be living on the earth, then we… then why does the church want to think about living so that we can get out of here? No. No. We shouldn’t be living to get out of here. We should be living to get God here, because He’s actually counting on us to get His life here, not us to go there.
He wants Himself here, and we’re perfectly positioned for Himself to be here in us. And so, when we are here for Him, then He makes all of who He is for us available to us. There’s no downside to this. There’s only upside. It’s like, hello, wake up in the morning and say, “Morning, Lord. Morning, Lord. Hello, Lord. Hello. Morning.” I do that. And I wake up in the morning and say, “Lord, I’m so glad I made it through the night.” I say that at least sixty, seventy percent of the time when I wake up in the morning, some of the first words that I say before I even get out of bed, the first thing is to say, “Thank You, Lord. I’m alive. Thank You, Lord. Thank You, Lord, that I woke up this morning.” You know, it’s not a given that everybody wakes up in the morning. I mean, sometimes we take it for granted that we, you know, go to sleep and we’ll wake up. A lot of people don’t wake up in the morning. Their bodies just quit at night. It happened to my mom for different reasons, but she went to sleep. She didn’t wake up the next morning. She died in her sleep.
So, not everybody wakes up in the morning. So, if I start my morning, “Thank You, Lord, for the fact that I woke up this morning.” That already acknowledges that the rest of my day, I’m giving to Him. “Morning, Lord. I bless You today. I thank You for today. I thank You that the sun is shining today.” And even if it’s cloudy, if you don’t know it, the sun shines behind the clouds. The sun shines every day. Hallelujah. Praise the Lord. I do. I wake up in the morning and I say, “Thank You Lord that the sun is shining, that this is the day You’ve made, and I’m going to be in it. I’m going to live in it. I’m going to live with You, and I expect all good things to come to me today because I’m in You and You in me, and this is the way You intended me to live. It’s just to be in with You today out of the whole day.”
And sometimes, I walk a skeef-turn because sometimes I get too full of myself in my head, and I get too full of myself in my soul, and then I’ve got to say, “Sorry. Sorry.” Actually, I’ll say sorry to myself because I’m the one who suffers God doesn’t suffer anything. You know, it’s more like I’m going to slap myself. [Pastor John slaps himself on his cheek] And if you know, it’s a good reason for a partner to slap a partner. “Wake up, wake up. Give thanks to the Lord.” No, don’t do that, don’t do that, don’t do that. [Pastor John laughs] [Pastor Sharon: I’m already up by the time you…] This is true. But I can’t get up the time she gets up. She needs to have an hour with God before I even get up. But this is a real thing, it’s an important thing for her life. She’s got to be with the Lord first thing in the morning. She thinks nobody else is awake other than her when she wakes up. There’s a lot of people still awake on the earth. Some haven’t gone to sleep from the night before, but it doesn’t matter. She just doesn’t like to be interrupted when she has the first moments with God. I respect that, I honour that and we live with understanding together in that. We have fun, we do.
It was very interesting for many years when we travelled overseas and sharing a single room and she needed to spend time with God. She’d go into the bathroom and there would be a bath and she’d take some extra pillows and blankets and she’d put like a little thing and she’d sit like this. “Close the door, don’t come into my bathroom, I’m having time with God.” Yes, ma’am. “But I need to go to the toilet.” “Not until I’m done praying. Hold it. Hold it, boy, hold it.” [Pastor John laughs] No, we had some fun. Thank God we’re in a place now in our lives where we can have a little bit more comfort like that. We have a suite that we normally order. Homewood Suites and these places give us reasonable prices and we have reasonably good things where we can enjoy and have space to spend time with the Lord the way that we live our lives. Amen.
Well, that was some fun. I hope you enjoyed the fun with us. Hey? Listen, I have fun with this girl. We’ve been married nearly 45 years. Next wedding anniversary will be 45 years. I’ve got to tell you another fun story. Did you know that we were married 44 years the day before Epic started? We were married 44 years. I was already in Cape Town. I got to the end of the day, I saw what day it is. I thought our wedding anniversary was the next day. Hey, it’s the 16th. I phoned, I don’t know, it was was six, seven o’clock in the evening, I said, “Hey, babes, you know what day it is?” She said, “No.” I said, “It’s our anniversary today.” [Congregation laughs] [Pastor Sharon: I have anniversary with you every day, baby.] So, what she said is the truth.
We have such a wonderful marriage that we don’t have to celebrate one day and make it such a big day that if we forget it, now we … you know, because the one day you better remember. We have anniversary every day. We do. We have an anniversary every day because we just enjoy each other like that. Because we tapped into, we, literally, tapped into the Continuous Perfect State of Being, the love of God and the God love and we let His love guide our marriage and make our marriage full and it still is a Continuous Perfect State of Being till this day and it’s getting more continuous, more perfect as we get older. Hallelujah.
You’d better go, otherwise, we’re going to have a party all night long. Thanks for coming. See you tomorrow morning, nine bells.
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