Scripture reference: Matthew 16:19 (AMPC); Matthew 16:5-12 (NLT); Matthew 16:17-28 (NLT); Matthew 16:24-26 (AMPC)
Pastor Sharon: I thank You, Father, the words that come now to our hearts, our open hearts, our loving hearts for You. Every heart here will be open to receive the Truth, Father, that even though a mind may be young, that Holy Spirit, You will bring the words of Pastor John to the hearts of the children even, that they will know by the Spirit what You are saying and You will bring Your Words to our hearts and Holy Spirit, we will know what You are saying today. In Jesus’ name and we all say, amen.
Pastor John: Hallelujah. Praise Jesus. Well, that’s awesome, isn’t it? It’s really wonderful. It’s really, really wonderful. Are you glad you’re in church, this morning? Me too. Hallelujah. Just say, hello to someone and tell them, “I’m glad you’re in church today.” Then you may be seated, please. No, I’m not going to do it, Empie, I’m gonna leave it today. Praise Jesus. Let me just say right from the beginning that it’s a privilege for me to stand in this pulpit, on this platform and minister the Word of God to you people. You are amazing people, you are wonderful people. You are God’s chosen, hand-picked people, and it’s a marvellous, wonderful experience for me as a chosen messenger of God to come and stand here and be able to bring the message of the Word to you. I thank you for your commitment to Jesus and I thank you for being a people that is willing to follow and obey God.
There are many, many reasons that people make decisions on the earth. There are many reasons that we do things in life. And I would say for a large portion of population, a large collection of people wherever they might be on the planet over generations and generations and generations of people, the biggest reason people have made decisions on the earth has been survival decisions. Survival. The best decision for survival. The reason people have made choices and made decisions is where am I safest? Where am I going to be most productive? Where can I make money that can keep me safe and secure? Where are my best possibilities for both my life and for my family’s life? So, that is the biggest reason why people have made and how they have made decisions in their lives.
If we want to get into academics, we could call it Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs. Right? If you want to get academic about it, we could use that where the lowest form of decision is survival. It’s making decisions that are based on your needs. And then, of course, as your life gets more secure and there’s more money and there’s more things, you move up a pyramid of needs to where you get to the point of what Maslow called a hierarchy of needs. And you get to a point where now your life is no longer about what you will eat and drink, but about some kind of mission and some kind of purpose. If you haven’t heard of Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs, go, just Google it. You don’t have to go and do a marketing degree to get one or an MBA. You can just Google it and it will tell. Amen?
Do you know that you can do a whole degree online today through Google and wikipedia and all that kind of stuff, and you don’t even have to go to college anymore? I mean, you might not get a certificate, but you could do a degree. You can learn accounting, you can learn marketing, you can learn a whole lot of stuff, and just through Google. So, yes, okay, you won’t get a certificate, but you’ll know a lot about life, and you won’t have to pay anything for it. How about that? Jah, ne? Okay, that’s another discussion for another time. I’m not going to get sidetracked, here.
But people have made a lot of decisions for a lot of different reasons. For the most part, people don’t make decisions primarily on what the will of God is for their life. Generations and generations and volumes and volumes of people, thousands and millions and up to billions of people, generally make decisions based on Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs and the basic one of the security and long-term source of provision. The last thing that they do is find out what God’s will is for their life. Most of the time, once they’ve made those decisions, they will start figuring out ways if God comes into the picture at all. And I speak for most of the church even. If God even comes into the picture at all, most of the times they will justify their reasons for these choices, why it’s God’s will. But actually, God was never really in the equation.
So, when I come and stand here and I minister to you on a weekend, when we have times during the week, when we have special meetings, Tuesday night prayer meetings, and you people pitch up, whether it’s online, at home, or whether you come to the auditorium here, you pitch up, you show up to come and pray and it’s our privilege, and it’s truly an honour for me to be able to say you are an amazing people. Because you really are pursuing God as your first point of contact to make a decision, not your last. It’s your first point of contact. What is God’s will for my life? It’s your first place that you go. And then, I trust that by the end of today, we will begin to see a whole new perspective of things. What I have titled the message today is, Crossover Reset, because I feel in my heart that we have done a lot of Crossing Over messages to now, and God has reset some things in our lives and in our hearts. And we are in a position of reset and it’s time for us to talk the new language that God has given us and begin to move forward.
So, our new language that I have been talking to you about is that, and it’s not my intention today to talk about some of the basic principles of Christian life, like the righteousness of Christ, the just shall live by faith and many of the other basic principles of Christ. I’m not going to talk about that today, but I’m going to reference them today. So, the reason you and I are at church today, and why we stand in praise and worship and lift our hands and worship God, is because we have the right to do it. You have the right to do it. We don’t come with an attitude when we come to praise and worship God, when we come to give Him our thanks, we don’t come here seeking a moment where, maybe He will accept us or maybe He won’t. Maybe we will make up for a bad week that we had, if we come and praise Him today. That is not the way we approach God. When we come here, we approach God because we are in His family and it’s our privilege and our right to do it. God doesn’t require our praises, but we require to praise Him, for us. Because when you praise Him, He comes and brings His presence into our praise. So, it’s a right that we have to come and do it. Amen.
So, you and I have right-standing with God, which means you have righteousness. Now, I’m going to read a number of scriptures to you in a minute, but if you will just bear with me as I create a framework for us, today. If you’re the managing director of a company or you’re the CEO of a company, they’re much the same kind of status in a company, although sometimes they will have legal differences. If you’re the managing director of a company or a CEO, I’m going to just use a managing director for a moment because that title is normally given to people that have an official title in a company, which is a directorship, and they are the senior managing director. A chief executive officer does not necessarily have to be a director of a company. Most times they are, but that means they are the number one executive officer in the company. So, I’m not here to give a legal business lesson. I’m just making sure we understand each other. But if you’re a managing director, that means you’re managing the company and you are a director of the company.
So, if you’re the managing director and you have a whole company underneath you, the likelihood is that you are either a shareholder or you are reporting to a group of shareholders. They might be private investors or they might be listed on a stock exchange of sorts. But if you’re a managing director, you’re almost always going to be accountable to a broader set of directors and or shareholders and or investors. Very seldom is a managing director not accountable to anybody. Very seldom.
I don’t want to go too far with this here, but if you’re a managing director and you are managing the company, do you think that the managing director goes into the company asking his employees if he can please come to work? No. I mean, the managing director is, or the chief executive officer is the managing one, the chief one, so he doesn’t come to work begging people, “Can I please come and work?” Neither does he go to the board of directors or to the investors and say, “Can I please come to work?” If they’ve conferred a title and he has a contract or she has a contract that says, I am this title. These are my obligations. Then he just goes about doing what the contract says. So the contract will come with the title, will come with a set of responsibilities and obligations. Yes?
So, he doesn’t have to to pitch up at work every day thinking about whether it’s his right to come to work. Neither would he think about whether it’s his right to earn an income for what he’s doing because part of the contract will say, “If you do these responsibilities, this will be your compensation.” Right? So, I pitch up to work every day. If you’re the managing director, you pitch up to work every day and you set about doing what’s in the contract. And so the contract might say, “We want you to, as an obligation to all of the stakeholders,” that’s another word that you can use for a broader spectrum of people. “We want you to be improving our quality of goods and services to our customers and to, and a broader group of people.” So that would be your obligation. I’m just going to use one. I’m not going to get technical today. “Just use one for that and other things you have to do. You will earn so much money every month. If you exceed our expectation, and this is the target for a year, then you will, because you exceed expectation by ten percent or twenty percent, whatever the number is, you will get rewarded by an extra amount of money depending on profitability or various different things.” A contract will determine what you get. You don’t pitch up to work every day thinking about whether you’re going to get the money or you’re not going to get the money, or what you have to do next. You have a contract that sets it out, right?
I’ve got news for you. You and I, we have a contract. It’s called a covenant with God. And I’ve got news for you that this contract states that you don’t have to worry about what you’re going to eat, what you’re going to drink or what you’re going to wear. The contract says that. So what’s the obligation to fulfill the contract? Seek first the Kingdom and His way of doing things and all the payment terms are met. Wow. Really? Is this really true? Is this all we got to do? Seek Him first, His way of doing things, and then His obligation as the Employment Officer is to meet all of your eating, drinking, living, clothing needs.
So now, if you’re making a decision for your life, surely if all of these things are already in a contract and they’re already taken care of, then we don’t have to spend our lives speaking a language of everyday I go to work, I’m just making sure, check on the bank account to make sure that they’re going to meet my salary. No, no. That’s not your job, every hour you’ve got to go check the bank account to make sure there’s money there for your salary. It’s not your job to go and worry about all of that stuff. Your job is to fulfill the contract.
Matthew chapter 16 verse 19 says, I’m reading from the Amplified. 19 I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; and whatever you bind (declare to be improper and unlawful) on earth must be what is already bound in heaven; and whatever you loose (declare lawful) on earth must be what is already loosed in heaven (Matthew 16:19 AMPC). Now, there’s a lot of teaching that has gone around about this particular verse of scripture, binding and loosing. And over the last six months, I have talked about this some already, but I just want to make a point. I will give you the keys of the Kingdom. When you have these keys, whatever you bind on earth, it’s bound. Why? Because if you have a key, then you know what that key does. The contract part is the key. If you don’t have the key, then you don’t know what to bind or loose. If you know what the key is, then you know what to bind and loose. And so, don’t bind and loose something that you don’t have the key for.
So, if I don’t have a key to any particular home, I mean, the reason we have keys to our home and nowadays we don’t just have keys, we have alarms and sometimes we have multiple alarms and gate keys and house keys and many keys to get into a place. Because we want to do our best to keep people out from where we want to be safe. If you don’t have the right key and you don’t have the right electronic key, then you can’t get access to a place and you can’t go and take anything out of that place because you can’t get into it. So, you can stand in front of a house that you don’t have a key to and you can say, “I command all of the stuff that’s in that house to come into my hands.” You can loose it out of that house into your house all you like. If you don’t have the key, your loosing is for nothing. It’s wasted words. Right?
You can see somebody arriving there with a whole new truckload of furniture and you can say, “I bind that guy from spending all that money and I command all of that stuff to come into my hands.” Well, you don’t have his keys. So you can’t get that stuff. Right? But somehow Christians think that we can bind and loose anything because we have this blank check of authority. Well, that’s not how it works.
I do want to say that if I’m going to speak to you about a Continuous Perfect State of Being, remember God is love. God is love. And love is a Continuous Perfect State of Being. It’s always present everywhere on the earth. It’s a Continuous Perfect State of Being. So God, Himself, is a Continuous Perfect State of Being. Wherever God is, there is a continuous perfect state of occupation. We agreed, hey? You’re all still with me. And so, wherever there’s a continuous perfect state of occupation, there are also a continuous perfect state of laws. An order of God that is always present. They never change. The Bible says that God is always the same. There’s no shadow of turning in Him. There’s no variableness in Him, the Amplified Bible says. He is always the same – yesterday, today, forever, He’s always the same, which means in His Continuous Perfect State of Being, there is a continuous perfect state of occupation. It’s called Heaven. And wherever He is, that is Heaven. And wherever Heaven is, that’s where He is. It’s a continuous perfect state of occupation. And wherever Heaven is, there are His laws and His order of His way of doing things, are always there.
So if we … I told you, I really feel like the Lord wants us to use a different language because we get caught up in the word Kingdom or Heaven and we kind of, we zone out into this religious mindset. “Oh, that’s what it means.” Where actually, the Lord is really trying to move us into a different realm of operating, and a different realm of behaviour.
So what is required for you and me? What is required for you and me to be able to bind on earth what is bound in Heaven. What do we have to do to loose things on earth that is loosed in Heaven? Well, we have to have a revelation of our contract. We have to have a revelation of our covenant. If we don’t know what’s in the contract and we don’t know what’s in the covenant, then we’re not going to know what to bind and loose. Praise the Lord. I trust that today, after today, you and I are going to begin to behave differently.
If you and I live in a church that is fixated on one thing, then we are in danger of not being able to flow with what the Holy Spirit wants. So, we always need to be ready to flow with what the Holy Spirit wants. It is our desire that we will continue and be ready to flow with the Holy Spirit, all the time. Rick Renner said this about the church, about the local church. He said, What are the front lines? The front lines are the local church.” He said this, “Thank God for Bible schools, thank God for conventions. That is not really the battlefield. When you get into a local church, that is when the battle really begins. When you get into your local church, that is when the devil really starts throwing darts at you from everywhere. You will have every opportunity to pack your bags and split the scene. There’ll be times when you will want to look for greener grass elsewhere. It will always look so good on the other side of the fence until you get there. God has called you and me to fight right where God has planted us. And if it gets tough where we are, then this is our opportunity to develop endurance and stay put with other faithful ones“ Hallelujah. That’s what Rick Renner said in one of his books that we used in our prayer little book.
So people are quite comfortable and our language that we have spoken for many years is; hierarchy of needs. I’m going to use faith to make a difference in my world. I’m going to use faith to get my job. I’m going to use faith to pay my debts paid off, have my debts paid off. I’m going to use faith to change what’s in the contract. So there’s a contract God has given us, the covenant. I’m using a different language. The covenant of God is a contract. God made a contract with Himself that He will fulfill the contract because there wasn’t a man that was good enough to be able to stand with God in a contract, a covenant. He knew that man would always be the one that would break the contract and not fulfill the rules of the contract. So He made a contract with Himself. He made a covenant with Himself that is an unbreakable covenant that He will fulfill all the terms of what He wrote out is in the contract.
So then He said to you and me, “If you become My people and you seek Me first and you live in the ways that I declare you must live, then the contract is in its phase of being. So when you’re in that phase of being, you seek Me, you live the ways that I direct you to live, and I’ll take care of the needs part.” So for the most part, Christians have used faith. Just bear with me this morning, people. If we are not prepared to start in a revelation and progress in a revelation, then we will get stuck in a revelation. For example, I grew up in a local church. My father was the pastor of a church. And the things that the church was living those days is a very different revelation to the church that I live in and that I’m preaching in today. My father believed that God could make you sick to teach you a lesson and that some people died because God wanted to take them home for some reason. That’s what the denomination my father was in. That’s what they believe. If I stayed in that revelation, I probably wouldn’t be preaching to you today. That means as God gives us new revelation and better revelation and our walk with Him increases, we’ve got to be ready to change. Right?
I thank God that I was introduced to the faith message through Kenneth Hagin, Kenneth Copeland, Jerry Savelle. I thank God for the divine relationships that He has put in my life. But we as a church have a revelation of Ecclesia that I want to say very few churches get to get a revelation of Ecclesia and live in the practical application of what Ecclesia is. Very few people get to do that. We are pressing into an increasing revelation of what Ecclesia is. When we all come together, we are the Ecclesia and we are supposed to be called out to rule and to govern on the earth. So we’re called out from earth’s governance. We’re called out from a corrupt order of things and we are called to rule in a corrupt state with an incorruptible authority and order.
So I get back to the managing director. The managing director has a contract with the board of directors, shareholders, investors. He has a contract and he goes to work every day and his business is to do what the vision of the contract is. At the end of the month, money is put into the bank account. In fact, I’m using that because it’s an important part of what I want to share with you today. But it applies even to, into the most basic employment contract. You know, I used to have a young lady that used to work for me here in the ministry. She was one of the very first MiXchangers many years ago. And she came into our church here and we began to notice that she was just at church and at church. Often she was at church. And I began to get to know this young lady and one day she came and wanted to meet with me about something in my office. And I’m guessing now that was probably fifteen years ago, sixteen years ago.
So I asked her, I said, “What work do you do?” She said, “I work at the mall. I work in a retail store in the mall.” And she said, “That’s the reason why I can’t come to church every Sunday because I have to work at least two Sundays a month at the retail store in the mall.” I said, “Well, what kind of hours do you work?” She said, “I’ve got to be there at…..” I think it was nine in the morning till five or six o’clock in the evening. “All day, every day I work in the mall.” Well, I asked her, and so “Do you mind if I ask you how much they pay you to do this job?” She gave me the number. I said, “Well, let me ask you a question, If I pay you the same amount of money to come and work here for me and I’ll train you and teach you how to be a personal assistant with me and do a year of iXchange, MiXchange and I’ll pay you for it and you don’t have to go and work on a Sunday and a Saturday and you have hours that are nine to four every day. How does that sound to you?” She started crying. She said, “That’s really what I really would like to have it.” I said, “You have a job.”
She resigned from her job and she came to work for us and she worked for me personally. How many years? Five years? At least five years. Maybe seven years she came and worked for me. Every year her salary got improved. Everything about her life changed. The man she was dating then, she ended up marrying him. He came into the church, for a period of time, he became our Sound and Song leader for a while. Her life changed, because she got a different contract with a different set of rules. Same person. Someone had to recognise the potential in her. Someone had to see, I can stand in the place and give you a redeemed lifestyle. You don’t even have to do anything for it. Just come and have a new set of rules. Amen. And so, new set of rules. Praise the Lord.
I’m delighted to say to you that God has used my gifting and my calling many, many times like that in many, many people’s lives over the years. In fact, I’m just led by the Holy Spirit to share this. This wasn’t part of what I intended to preach today, but my son Garth had a dream, a kind of vision dream about me and he knew it was of the Lord and he came to share it with me, and he said, because those days I was driving a white Jeep Cherokee. That was my car at the time, and he said, “Dad, I saw you coming down this mountain pass and at the bottom of the mountain pass was a huge pileup accident with fire and flames.” And he said, “I saw you stop your car and jump out of the car and you ran into the flames and I saw you taking people out of cars and hauling them out of danger and bringing them to safety.” He said, “I saw you doing that.” I mean, it really moved him quite considerably because it was such a spiritual experience for him.
Well, I can say that I’ve certainly observed that about my calling. In many, many, many people’s lives, God has used me to go into the wreckage of their lives where there’s been fire and flames and all damage, and our ministry used me directly in many instances to go and haul people out of the dangers of their life and put them on a different path and save their lives. Well, I know I’m just standing in for the Great Shepherd Who does that to all of us. But that is a direct anointing that is on my life. I go sometimes into whole families and I go into the family and I need to do something and I obey God and I go into the family. Boom! It’s just like that. Everything starts to change around if they will obey God. I don’t stand here all the time telling you about this particular anointing that’s on my life, but it’s there. It’s there. It’s evident to see in people’s lives that are around me. Hallelujah.
Well, God is actually in the process of taking us out of a way that is destined for carnage and for all kinds of damage in our lives and He’s wanting to change our language. He’s wanting to change the way we see things and He wants to stop us worrying about whether we’re going to get a salary at the end of the month because we have a contract. His obligation is to make sure that we have all of our bills paid for. You see, if you read about so many presidents, CEOs, managing directors of large corporations, they get paid boatloads of money. People are always, and that’s a big movement around the world now, especially in people that are wanting to have socialism in their lives. They complain about the big salaries that executives earn.
I want to just explain to you that part of the thing is they don’t want an executive going into the office every day thinking about, “Have I got enough money to pay the bills?” Because if he’s got to be worried about himself paying the bills every month, what does he want to do? What’s he not going to focus on? The vision. He’s not going to focus on the mission and the purpose of what the company is supposed to be doing because he’s worried about his personal stuff all the time. Right? So they pay them lots of money for the whole thing of, they want them often to connect with other CEOs, other people that are in the same status of the corporate world, of business. They want them to be able to take time out to be creative, to find solutions to problems, and not just manage the problems.
Come on now. God didn’t put us on earth to manage our own life’s problems. God put us in His Church and His Ecclesia and said, “You just seek Me and you just follow after My ways of doing things and I’ll take care of your life. So that we can actually bring order to the earth.” I don’t know if you realise what a big statement I’ve just made? You know, I mean, listen, I’ve been there. I’ve had to believe God to pay off my debts. I’ve had to believe God to bring in money for my monthly bills. I thank God that I learned faith that He’s a trustworthy God, that I can trust Him to do those things for me. But the time for us as a people has got to the place where all of us have got to go to the next level and we’ve got to say, we’ve got to trust God in such a way that we are seeking Him and what His Kingdom ways are, His orders and His laws are of what we’ve got to do so that we can change things on the earth.
So I’ve said this for many, many years. What’s the point of being a Christian? It’s not just so we can go to Heaven. Heaven’s a good place to be for sure, better than hell. But the reason you get saved is so that you can become spiritual because it’s only spiritual people that know how to bring Heaven to earth. People that are not spiritual don’t know how to do it. And so we’ve got to stop behaving like we’re not spiritual. Because if we keep talking like we’ve got to, believe God for the next house, the next car, the next upgrade to our life, then we’re still thinking about ourselves all the time. Upgrade myself, upgrade myself. I must upgrade myself. I must upgrade myself. So I use my faith all the time to upgrade myself. And God said, “But you’re an Ecclesia, you called out to govern and reign and to rule on My behalf and bring all of My Continuous Perfect State of Order and My Continuous Perfect State of Ruling to the earth.”
I mean, Jesus already did that. God, the Father already did that. He said, “I’m going to make what look – what’s in Heaven, I’m going to make it on earth. Adam and Eve, what’s in Heaven, you’re going to be that on the earth.” The church has been talking about the fact that we’re all going to leave this earth and the pinnacle of our Christian experience is to leave the earth. It’s not. It’s not. It’s just not. The pinnacle of our Christian experience is not to count the days until we get raptured. The pinnacle of our Christian experience is to rule and reign with God on earth as it is in Heaven. This is what we’re supposed to do.
So if we praying, if you are praying privately and you’re praying for God to meet your needs, I suggest you stop. I suggest you at least change your language and you begin to thank Him and praise Him that He is the God that has already met your needs. Because that’s giving Him the right. You’re saying, “I’m seeking Your way of doing things.” Please find me a scripture anywhere in the New Testament where you find Jesus asking the Father to meet His needs. Why would Jesus not ask the Father to meet His needs? You want to tell me why? Because they were already met. So why even go there? Why even go there? Okay.
Do you remember years ago I spoke to you about what my definition of prayer is? Do you remember I said to you that everybody, all the religions on the earth pray. So prayer in itself, in its broadest definition, is anybody making a request with a god. So in that sense, there are many people that pray to many gods. So I said to you, but that’s not really the biblical order of prayer. Because what’s the point of praying, speaking to a dead god? That’s not prayer actually. That’s requesting something from somebody that’s dead. That’s just hot air. The fact that you believe in your own hot air is your problem. Really.
So prayer is not praying to any god. If you remember, I said prayer is communication with a Living Divine Being. Are you pleased with yourself that you remembered that baby? She says if she had a mirror, she’d kiss herself. So prayer is communication with a Living Divine Being. It’s communication. So if you remember those years ago when I spoke to you about prayer, I said, “Now we can have an active prayer life because the Living Divine Being is in you.” So I said something that some people might have thought controversial at that time. I said, is not everything that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit says, prayer? Do they not then pray to themselves? Because they’re all Living, they’re all Divine, and they’re all communicating with each other about what the will of the Father is. Yes? This becomes important because then we understand that if we are praying, we are praying from in our living divine being that’s in our spirit. We are communicating with a Divine Living Being that is the Holy Spirit that takes all our requests to the Father. Hallelujah.
So, what happens then if we start to say things that actually are not the order of God? So He’s the Perfect Continuous State of Being. In Him is a Continuous State of Occupation. In Him is a Continuous State of Order. So, what happens if you come to God and you ask Him something that is not in line with His order? What’s He going to do with it? Nothing. It’s just nothing prayers. It’s just nothing. So, but what happens if I really believe in what I’m praying? It’s still nothing. Because you’re believing for something that is out of order. Jah, hey? If we are a group of people that are coming to pray together, then we are the Ecclesia that is coming together to pray together. And when we come together, we make a decision that we are not just going to pray like we would pray on our own. We are going to come together and address matters on the earth that matter to God as a ruling group of people. That’s why when we come together, we don’t come together as a people that have individual people praying. We come and sit in a corporate setting, we have one person praying at a time, and we have everybody get into agreement with the person who is praying at a time. And then sometimes we will all come together and pray in the Spirit together, united corporately to pray together. The power of agreement.
Well, where do you get that from? Where did we get that from? Well, if you are in a house of governing bodies, you don’t have everybody speaking all at the same time. When they promote a piece of legislation, or they want to affirm a piece of legislation, or they want to do something, somebody will put out an order, a law, a ruling. And then people will, one at a time, they will bring their debates, and then they will vote on it in a democratic society, yes? Well, because you need to hear what the person is saying, so that when you come with your vote, your agreement, to be ruling, you’ve got to get into agreement with what the person is saying. Jah. So that’s why we pray like we pray. And I thank God, that’s why I think you guys are all amazing because you’re ready to come to prayer every Tuesday night and come take your seat in Government. And God has given us instructions in His Government on how we should pray. And He says, “When you come together, this is how you must pray. First order of business, pray for those in authority, pray for those leaders. Second order of authority, pray for people that they might get saved and that they will come to the knowledge of Truth.” There’s an order of business in God’s Governing Body, that’s us. That’s why we come to pray like we pray.
Now I ask you, “I don’t want to go to prayer meeting, I don’t want to do prayer meeting because I’m interested in, I’ve got to have, I’ve got to be focused on what I need for my life. I’ve got to be focused on what I need for my life, because I need for my life. I plan my life, my time is scarce, I have very little free time, and every bit of free time, I’ve got to use it the maximum that I can. And prayer meeting is just not a maximum use of my time.” God says, “I need you to learn to rule as an Ecclesia on the earth, this is My way.” You say, “I don’t care,” not you, generally. People say, “That’s not a good use of my time.” And God says, “That’s why you’re still focused on having your needs met because you’re not learning to do things My way. What’s important to My ruling and governing, through you. Because I’m not coming back to earth to rule. I’ve done my ruling on the earth, Jesus is now sitting at the Right Hand of the Father, and now I’ve left the ruling to you. So if you don’t do it, I’m not coming back to do it, until you do it.”
“So, I’ve got to focus on me, I’ve got to focus on my money, I’ve got to focus on my income, I’ve got to focus on all my responsibilities, I’ve got bills to pay.” And if you keep focusing on it, you will focus on it for the rest of your life. And everything you do will center around your small world of your needs. In the meantime, God’s saying, “I’ve got a whole different contract waiting for you to sign here. Here’s a contract that will elevate you from employee to sonship. No longer will you just be a servant, but you will be a son. Sign the son contract, let’s get on with the business of ruling on the earth.” “No, no, God, I don’t trust You. Because all of the experiences I’ve had in life is You’re not trustworthy.” Your experience or other people’s experience, that you’ve brought into your experience? So for you to say to me that God doesn’t meet needs and doesn’t want to be part of our success, it’s too late. He already established the whole pattern of success. For me. For you. What He wants us to do is to step up into sonship. Hey?
Thank you, Matthew chapter 16 verse 5. This is the New Living Translation. 5 Later, after they crossed to the other side of the lake, the disciples discovered they had forgotten to bring any bread. 6 “Watch out!” Jesus warned them. “Beware of the yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees.” Some translations say leaven. 7 At this they began to argue with each other because they hadn’t brought any bread. 8 Jesus knew what they were saying, so he said, “You have so little faith! Why are you arguing with each other about having no bread? 9 Don’t you understand even yet? Don’t you remember the 5,000 I fed with five loaves, and the baskets of leftovers you picked up? 10 Or the 4,000 I fed with seven loaves, and the large baskets of leftovers you picked up? 11 Why can’t you understand that I’m not talking about bread? So again I say, ‘Beware of the yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees.’” 12 Then at last they understood that he wasn’t speaking about the yeast in bread, but about the deceptive teaching of the Pharisees and Sadducees (Matthew 16:5-12 NLT).
So, if I keep on preaching to you as a messenger of God on the earth, if I keep preaching to you all the time about bread and about having your needs met, then I’m going to keep preaching to you at a level that’s never going to raise you out of the status that you are at in your life. “So Pastor John, it seems to me that you’ve had a revelation about this for a long time. How is it that you’re only preaching about it now?” There’s a couple of reasons why. First of all, I had to be ready to preach it. Secondly, we needed to have a group of people that when they heard it, they would be ready to receive it. Because God’s never ever going to waste words because He wants all words to be productive.
Did God not say, “Every single word I speak will not go out there and be unproductive, but it will return to Me as being productive?” That means if He sends words out, it’s going to do what He sent them out to do. So, if He’s going to speak words out over a people, He wants the people to take those words and live those words. I found myself in a church not so long ago. I’m not going to talk about too many details. I got very introspective about myself afterwards. I do that. Don’t look at me like you don’t do that. I got introspective about myself because Brother Jerry called me up and he wanted me to be activated in the Spirit. Before he called me up, I already knew he was going to call me up. I already saw in my spirit what I was going to do. I got up in the service and I began to do what I saw myself doing. The next minute it was like the Holy Spirit put a clamp on my mouth and shut me up. I almost shut down completely in front of all the people. Brother Jerry even looked at me and he said to me, “Is that all you want to say, John?” I said, “Yes, sir.” I went and I sat down. I really got down on myself about it because I knew I was ready. I knew the Holy Spirit had already warned me that I must go up and I must say what I must say. But what happened is as I began to activate those people, the Holy Spirit literally shut my mouth and later on when I was less introspective about myself, and I began to seek what did the Holy Spirit do? Why? Why did this happen? I began to realise that I was about to step into territory that was my revelation, that those people weren’t ready to flow with my revelation. By the grace of the Holy Spirit, He just shut me down and He said, “John, you can’t take that to them. They aren’t ready for it yet.”
Let me tell you, that church is a Holy Spirit church full of Holy Ghost people, a great church. But what I was about to do would violate what I’ve just said to you, that God’s not going to waste words to people that won’t have the opportunity to act on it. It was a lesson for me because many years I’ve heard Brother Hagin say this. I’ve heard many people say this that, “I’ve got revelations that I can’t teach you.” I’ve had this happen amongst us even. I’ve got revelations. I know that I can’t teach you yet. But that was so immediately impacting to me that it startled me. But I thank God that the Holy Spirit stopped me because if you step out into territory where you shouldn’t be, that’s when you begin to turn around and see the wind and you begin to sink in the waves. Then you need Jesus to come and rescue you. I felt that He rescued me anyway. To be honest with you, that’s the way I felt standing up there.
I’m grateful and thankful. I’m grateful and thankful that God has brought us as a people to this place where we could, where we can teach about this and we can flow like this as a people. And you know that to a large part, it’s because you are willing, ready, able to come and pray collectively as a people every Tuesday night. Really. Because when we come to pray on a Tuesday night, we come to do Ecclesia work. We don’t just come and pray.
Still today, let me tell you still today, the majority of people in churches, the least attended meeting in the church is the prayer meeting. You know, the reason for that is, well, because most churches don’t understand how to pray. They don’t know how to do God’s business in prayer. Most of their prayer meeting is Matthew 6, “What am I going to eat? What am I going to drink? What am I going to wear? Where am I going to live?” And most churches come to pray for Auntie Sally’s dog that needs to be healed. Come on. And so the church doesn’t want to come and govern in spiritual authority.
Thank You, Holy Spirit, for reminding me. You remember when COVID was on and we were having all of these lockdowns in church services and churches were fifty people, then they had hundred people. And then suddenly there was a new outbreak and a new strain that came and then they brought the churches back to fifty people. And there was a whole bunch of churches that all came together, fairly large churches. They all came together and they actually sued the government. They sued the government and they brought a court order against the government for shutting them down. I wasn’t aware of all of the things that were going on at the time. I found most of it out later.
But if you remember, what did we do? What did we do as a people? We said, “We’re going to close our church for the next three Sundays to comply with the orders of the government. But we are not just going to close our church on the basis of the order. We are going to sow our closing as a seed to the complete restoration of all church services for the future.” You know, what we did was we said, “We understand that there’s a natural order, but we are going to the Supreme Governor. We are going to the Supreme order of things, the Divine Perfect Being. And we are going to use our biblical status to unlock a natural government because, otherwise if we go with natural laws and take them on naturally, we just have a natural outcome.” But by taking a spiritual order, we unlocked the natural outcome by a spiritual divine thing. And do you remember it wasn’t but a week or two after we sowed that and the whole thing started breaking open. And I said to you at the time, I said, “I know that we are not the only ones that are doing the spiritual order here, there are other ministers, there are other churches, but I know God could use what we did.”
So that’s why whenever we are faced with natural things, the best line and approach is to be spiritual. Because when you’re operating spiritually, you bring divine order into the earth. And again, that’s why we don’t take the natural order of dating and finding a mate into our life equation. We tap into a Divine Order, we say, “Lord, we are following You, we’re following Your plan, Your purpose, Your assignment for our life, and now You take care of the rest.” I didn’t know all of this stuff, but that’s how God brought me into my wife’s life. It was a spiritual thing. I was following Him with all my heart. I loved Him with all my heart. I served Him with all my heart. And He brought me to a girl that I could connect with, that was passionate about God. He said it was a good thing and we said it was a good thing and 44 years later, it’s still a very good thing. And it’s getting better, not worse. Amen. Hallelujah.
So now I’m going to read to you from the Living Translation and I’ll close with this. It’s my first closing. I’ve got two or three to do still. Matthew 16 verse 17, the New Living Translation. Remember, there’s a whole thing going on, “Who do men say that I am?” And Simon says, “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.” 17 Jesus replied, “You are blessed, Simon son of John, because my Father in heaven has revealed this to you. You did not learn this from any human being (Matthew 16:17 NLT). Let me just tell you, just for a side journey here, the most powerful thing that you can learn on this earth is not from an institution. It’s directly a revelation from the Father that will give you a revelation about life that you can implement and live for in eternity with. Isn’t it amazing that we will give so much of our time to learn about natural order of things? And yet God has got all this divine knowledge for us that He wants to give us and we say we’ll just relegate it to a half an hour or a five minutes or a ten minutes in the morning.
18 Now I say to you that you are Peter, I’ve spoken about this recently. 18 … upon this rock I will build My church, and all the powers of hell will not conquer it. I’ll tell you what, the Church, the Ecclesia, that’s what this scripture says; He’s not calling this church a congregation church, He’s calling this the Ecclesia Church. And hell cannot conquer an Ecclesia. 19 And I will give you the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven, Ecclesia. Whatever you forbid on earth will be forbidden in heaven, and whatever you permit on earth will be permitted in heaven.” That’s why I read the Amplified version first, because it’s what’s already been loosed and what’s already been permitted. 20 Then He sternly warned the disciples not to tell anyone that He was the Messiah.
So just bear with me as I begin to minister this final bit to you, are you still with me here? Say, amen somebody, just so that I know you are awake, because you are an Ecclesia people you are more governing authority. Hallelujah. 21 So from then on Jesus began to tell His disciples plainly that it was necessary for Him to go to Jerusalem, that He would suffer many terrible things at the hands of the elders, the leading priests, and the teachers of religious law. He would be killed, but on the third day He would be raised from the dead. Jesus was telling His disciples what was coming. 22 But Peter took Him aside and began to reprimand Him for saying such things. Just notice, “Heaven forbid, Lord,” he said, “This will never happen to you!” 23 Jesus turned to Peter, “Get away from me Satan! You are a dangerous trap to me. You are seeing things merely from a human point of view, not from God’s.” Point of view (Matthew 6:18-23 NLT).
What’s the trap you and I are always going to be faced with? See things from a human point of view, not from God’s point of view. But Peter came and said, “Heaven forbid.” Didn’t Jesus just say what is forbidden in Heaven, you can forbid on earth? Peter is saying, “Hey, I got that. I’m the one who got the revelation. Hey, forbid this will happen to You.” “You are a trap to me because you’re seeing this from a human point of view. You can’t forbid something that’s not forbidden in Heaven. It is God’s will that I must die. So don’t try and trap Me with your human ways.” Invoking God’s order in human ways. Saying that it’s God’s will, but it’s human ways. Come on, this is not me preaching this, this is Jesus preaching this. This is Jesus preaching this. If I had a leather Bible, it would probably be more impactful, but it’s on my iPad. Doesn’t matter. It’s just, it’s just… [Pastor John shows a paper Bible] It’s the Word of God. It’s the Word of God. This is not me saying that. So?
24 Then Jesus said to His disciples, “If any of you wants to be My follower, you must give up your own way, take up your cross and follow Me. 25 If you try to hang on to your life, you will lose it. I don’t care which translation you read this in. Every translation says the same thing. If you try and hold on to your life, if you try and keep your life, if you try and save your life, you will lose it, because you are activating things in the way of humans. 26And what do you benefit if you gain the whole world, but lose your own soul? Is anything worth more than your soul? Hey? Is anything worth more than your soul?
Now, I just want you to note for a minute here. This is not Jesus talking about whether you can be saved or not saved. This is about Jesus saying, “You’re going to operate in the Kingdom of Heaven. You’re going to operate in the realm of Ecclesia.” 26 But if you give up your life for My sake, you will save it. And what do you benefit if you gain the whole world but lose your own soul? Is anything worth more than your soul? 27 For the Son of Man will come with his angels in the glory of his Father and will judge all people according to their deeds. 28 And I tell you the truth, some standing here right now will not die before they see the Son of Man coming in his Kingdom (Matthew 6:24-28 NLT).
I’ve got news for you. The Son of Man is still coming in His Kingdom. Still, continuously coming in His Kingdom through you and me. Still. I’m going to read those two verses for you in the Amplified. 24 Then Jesus said to His disciples, “If anyone desires to be my disciple, let him deny himself, disregard, [lose sight of and forget himself and his own interests] and take up his cross and follow Me [cleave steadfastly to Me, conform wholly to My example in living and if need be in dying also]. 25 For whoever is bent on saying his [temporal] life [his comfort and security here] shall lose it [eternal life]; and whoever loses his life [his comfort and security here] for My sake shall find it [life everlasting]. 26 For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his life [his blessed life in the kingdom of God]? Or what would a man give as an exchange for his [blessed] life [in the kingdom of God]? (Matthew 16:24-26 AMPC)
In other words, what price do you want to put on living a blessed life in the Kingdom of God? What price? So, reset. This is our moment of reset, crossing over reset. We are going to keep talking to each other, a reset language. Are you ready for a reset language? And you and I have got to hold each other accountable to keep speaking reset language to each other. If you hear me talking about things that God has already provided, you say, “Pastor John, let’s praise God for things that God wants us to believe Him for that they are met in Jesus’ name.” I’ve done this with people many times. What do you believe in God for? Send me a WhatsApp, send me a note, send me so that I can get into agreement with you that it’s met. That it’s met. Hallelujah.
I want to tell you, I have a reset in my spirit. I have a whole reset in my whole posture when it comes to healing. Because in the Kingdom of God, He didn’t even speak to born again disciples, He just spoke to committed disciples who had laid down their lives to follow Him. And He said, “Go and heal the sick and cast out devils.” And I, under the leading of the Holy Spirit on the Easter weekend, we began to declare that we are a healed, restored whole people. We are healed people. We are a whole people. We are an order of people who live in the wellness and the healing power of the Most High God. And if it hasn’t manifested in your body yet, it’s still busy manifesting. Don’t look at your symptoms and say, “It hasn’t happened yet.” It is happening. And you keep on declaring, “I’m healed in Jesus’ name. I’m healed in Jesus’ name.” Hallelujah.
The majority of what medicine does is manage symptoms. God is the One that can heal you. So, if you need doctors to help you manage symptoms, go for it. But trust God for the healing power of God to make you whole. Whole, whole. Be whole in Jesus’ name. Be healed and be whole in Jesus’ name. Come on, stand with me right now. Let’s thank God for that. Let’s thank God for that. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. I thank You for wholeness, Lord, and healing in my body. In my body, healing and wholeness. Everything that is in disorder in my body, dis-ease disorder, I declare in the Name of Jesus healing, healing, healing in Jesus’ name.
The Continuous Perfect State of Being that is the Father lives inside of you. I’ve got news for you. The very power of creation, the very power of wellness and well-being is the source of your eternal life living in your body. Just let that eternal life fill your cells and your pores and your brain. Just let that life fill your human body and say, “I’m healed by the power of the Continuous Perfect State of Being that lives inside of me.” Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Glory to Jesus.
I’ll tell you we are in an order of God. God is bringing His order to our lives that when it comes to everything, He’s just going to say, “You’re healed, your needs are met. Here’s your assignment. Don’t forget your assignment. This is what I want you to focus on. Your assignment, your gifting, your calling, the stuff that you’re supposed to be doing so that we can rule on the earth. Let’s focus on that.” “Well, but I’ve got bills to pay.” “Just keep working with Me, sign the contract and your bills will be paid.” Praise Jesus.
So, we have a new reset language. Hey, we’re going to learn a whole new language that we are going to speak to each other. We’re going to live with each other day in and day out, week in and week out. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. We have Message Moments this afternoon at five o’clock. And come and be ready to speak. Reset. Hallelujah. Glory to God.
Will you put your hand on your heart, please? Just make this declaration with me and say, “Lord, I thank You for wholeness, for wellness, and for all the goodness in my life that You give to me through Jesus and I thank You, Lord, that I have new eyes to see, I have new ears to hear, and I will follow You wherever You take me in Jesus’ name. Amen.” Hallelujah. Glory to God. I’ll tell you, I know that there’s miracles that God is doing. You know, the definition of a miracle is just things that are the normal in Heaven coming to what’s below standard on the earth. So normal eaven life to life that’s below standard; that’s what a miracle is. So let’s allow God to bring His normal life onto the below standard life that we live. It’s already happening. It’s already happening. Hallelujah. Glory to Jesus. Amen.
Nikki, it was wonderful to have you with us. Yes. And you are blessed in your travel back to the USA tonight. Amen. Today? Tuesday. Oh, it’s Tuesday. I thought it was tonight. Oh, well, then I can say goodbye to you another time. [Pastor John laughs] Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord. Yes. [Pastor Christi reminds Pastor John about the offering] You would like to give an offering. Okay, well then you might as well be seated and let’s take up a quick offering. So, have you been ministered to this morning? Have you received the Word of God today? Hallelujah. Glory to God. Well, you know, when I came in here this morning, I was driving to church and I had this thing in my spirit. I had this thing in my spirit. “This is the time, John. This is the season.” This is a big, we used to call it this in our ministry, we used to call it a big rock moment, you know, but this is more than a big rock moment. This is a boulder. This is a foundation rock that we are building on now. It’s just amazing. It’s just amazing. Amen. Hallelujah. Praise the Lord.
I’m ready. I want to tell you I’m ready to flow with God in whatever He wants us to do in this ministry. Week by week, month by month, I’m ready to flow with God. I also believe that God has this reset because of our weekend that we gave to God, our first fruits that we gave to God. Ja. It works like that; because He sees obedience, He starts to bring more things.
It’s one of those keys of the Kingdom. Obedience is better than sacrifice. People are very keen to do sacrifices, but He says, “Just give Me obedience.” “Sacrifice is something I can do, I can do, I can do.” “I don’t want your sacrifice. I want your obedience.” It’s much better. And so, we have already been obedient. This is a good thing. Hallelujah.
Next Sunday, Pastor Sharon and I, Sunday night we will be leaving to go to the USA to go and be with Brother Jerry. Praise the Lord. We’re always blessed to be able to do this in our lives. Come up, Hans. Now, you can stand again. This is just a practical thing. You know why I have you sit down when we take up an offering? Do you want to know why? Because you can’t reach your wallet when you’re standing up. [Pastor John laughs] Well, that’s one reason. The other reason is that from a security point of view, it’s much easier to be able to see what’s going on when people are putting money in places when you’re seated. So, it’s a security thing as well. Just so you know. There are some practical things you have to do in ministry. Hello? [Pastor John laughs]
Thank you, Lord, for this seed that we can sow. Thank you for blessing us with such wonderful opportunities in our lives, so many good things in our lives, it’s a real honour for us to give You seed and that You give us bread for eating and for all manner of things that You want us to give in to. We thank You for it, Lord, in Jesus’ name. Everybody said; amen. Amen.
Be blessed in your going out and be blessed in your coming back. Be blessed in everything that you put your hands to, in Jesus’ name. I declare that the peace of God rests upon you. He rests in your mind and He rests upon all of what you do in your life. No weapon formed against you will prosper. Amen. Hallelujah. And that you are just blessed in everything. I’m just going to make this declaration. I declare that your cars are protected from any hazards or dangers on the road. So, I just felt this in my heart right now to declare that your cars are protected and that you are protected and that you don’t ride into damaging potholes, number one. And number two, that if there are any circumstances on the road, I declare that God protects you and saves you and guides you past any incidents that may happen on any driving on any road, in Jesus’ name. Do you all agree with me today? Amen. Thank you for coming everybody.
Oh, Chariots membership. If you want to renew your Chariots membership, there’s people in the foyer to do it right now. Bye.
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