Scripture reference: John 20:29 (AMPC)
Praise You, Jesus, Praise You, Lord, Hallelujah. Thank you, Lord, for this time that we’ve had together, with music and with song, and the worship of our hearts. Thank you that the rest of the service will be blessed by You, we will receive that blessing from You. In Jesus’ name. Amen. You may be seated.
Nic, I need you to help me with your guitar for a minute. Okay and I want everybody in the audience to watch me. Can you give me your guitar? I just want to play a chord. So, I can play a chord. No, I just want to, I’m not going to take that long. Is it on? I can play a chord! I can play two chords, how about that? Even three. Hallelujah. And then you know, if I really wanted to, I could… that’s pretty cool, hey?
Now you know, I am carrying, I have a guitar, and I have this guitar in my hands, but in my hands it is a rather silly thing, because I don’t play guitar that well. Just put this back on please Nic, and just for like 10 or 15 seconds give us a riff, a rock riff, kind of thing, that you would play. [Nic playing]
Now, if I wanted what he has got, right, there is a lot of things that is going to happen, but let’s just say for a moment, just for a moment, he puts his hand on me, on my shoulder here like this, and he says: “John, because I am touching your shoulder, everything that I’ve got now, becomes yours.” So, all of his skill, all of his talent, everything that he has got, becomes mine. Boom, I feel like Nic, I feel like Nic, I want to grab an electric guitar, I want to do something with an electric guitar, I feel like Nic. Ghee, where is the next rock concert, I want to play, Nic. I feel like Nic. Man, I want to put some studs in my ears, I want to, you know, I feel like Nic. What happened there Nic? You put your hands on me, I mean jish, I want to, look at the stuff he has in his ears today, it’s cool hey? I want to be like Nic, because he laid hands on me and there was this, like this dzzzt, happened and I became like Nic. Of course I am John, but I became like Nic. Joh, Nic, I feel the music, man! It is like wow. You live with this music in you all the time? It is like that hey? It is wow, sjjjj, man I got to get my hands on a guitar, I got to learn to play this thing.
Thank you, the rest of my message will unfold around Nic, but you may be seated somewhere else.
You see, what happens when you get born again and you become a Christian, you receive Jesus into your heart, you become Jesus, the minute you say, “Jesus come and live in my heart, and I want to be saved, and I receive you as my Lord and Saviour,” everything that is Jesus becomes yours, everything that was Nic, that laid hands on me, I became Nic. It doesn’t matter that I can’t play guitar, I mean I have got a few little things I can do here or there, but I am no way near to what Nic can do.
So, it is when you get born again and Jesus comes to live in your heart. You are not anything in your life, like Jesus is, but everything that is happening inside of you is Jesus. What you now got to do is, all these desires, all these things happening inside your spirit man, that wants to be like Jesus. If I take the Nic example, the minute he laid hands on me and the dzzzt thing happened, you know, then suddenly I want to pick up a rock guitar and I wanted to learn to play rock and I wanted, the music came and flowed in me, Right?
Well, that is what happens when you become Jesus, when you become born again. That same Jesus comes to live inside of you, and when that Jesus comes to live inside of you, it is like you can’t wait, everything inside of you is calling to be like Jesus. The thing about it is, that even though Nic might have transferred all of what he knows, and all of what he is to me, there is a lot of things that I have got to become. I have got to pick up a guitar, I have got to keep playing. Do you understand what I am saying? All his gifting has been transferred to me, but the learning of the gifting has still got to be learnt.
Now, I might find it a little easier than before, he put his hands on me, I might find it a bit easier and I might find my desire and my passion and my focus and everything that I am looking for, is there, is guiding me there and it is leading me there.
That’s truly what happens when Jesus comes into your life and He lives in your heart. The old person that was you that didn’t want to play guitar and in the real life sense that didn’t really know what to do with life, didn’t know how to be successful in life, didn’t know what decisions to make, and what directions to take, that person that was in you, that person still lives in your mind and lives in your soul, but the person that is Jesus that knows what to do, know where to take you, knows how to take you there, wants to take you there, has now filled your spirit.
Now what you have to do… His desire is to lead you through yourself that you were taught all these things, through it, into greatness into Christ-likeness. Come on this is a good thing. This is a good thing.
So you know I was… I have been speaking to you about how the devil decided in his own will that he could be like God, and then he realised he couldn’t. Then I began to speak to you about your will and your worship, whether your will is your platform and your worship is your power.
So, I want to describe what happens to you, by something that happened to me yesterday. Yesterday, I went on a mountain bike ride and an off road ride. We spent about four and a half hours on the bike, on the back roads of Bronkhorstspruit and all that area there. During the course of the morning, as we were riding on the bikes, these farm trucks that would come past us. This amazing thing happened to me yesterday…
What happened to me was, as we were riding on the bicycle, these trucks come pass, so now we are riding on these very well used farm roads, and as the truck come pass us, very respectful of the bikers, you know, and we are riding on the bikes and so they come past slowly, you know, they come pass slowly. As they are coming past us, they just bring dust with them, it just bring dust with them.
Now, we are pedaling on a fairly flat piece of road, nice wide farm roads. There is plenty of space for them to ride past us. I guess at the time we were peddling at around 30 kilometres per hour, if he is doing 40 kilometres per hour, it is going to take a while for him to come past us, do you understand? It took awhile for him to come past us, we were going at a decent lick. As he is arriving at us, this big truck’s dust is arriving at us too, and as the dust… He has not even got to me yet, and the dust is overwhelming me. Are you with me? As he goes past me, it is like [Pastor John coughing] the dust gets intense, and then as he goes past you, the dust that flows from behind him, is like waves of dust.
If you are riding in a straight line and that time, there was hardly any wind blowing, it just hangs in the air you know, like for the next five kilometres, it just hangs in the air, because he is not going much faster than us, and so we just keep riding in his dust. By the end of the time when the dust cleared, guess what we looked like? Full of dust, right?
Well, when you make Jesus, the Lord and Saviour of your life, He comes to live inside of you, there is something that comes with Jesus. What comes with Jesus is the blessing. The blessing is in Jesus, He is blessed. Right? So, the blessing lives within you because Jesus is in you.
I have got some definitions and some things I want to talk around, the blessing this morning, but the very simple thing is, Jesus doesn’t have to wonder whether blessing is His inheritance or not, because He just lives in the blessing, right? It’s who He is. I mean, it’s like you can’t separate life from breathing. If you breathe you live, right? If you live, you breathe. If you breathe you live. You can’t separate the two. Stop breathing, stop living. Stop living, stop breathing. It’s like that. The blessing that is in Jesus, when you receive Him as your Lord and Saviour, you receive with Him, blessing. If you have Him, you have blessing. Now, that’s the born again believer, however, that’s the blessing that lives in you, but then there is a requirement for the blessing to come upon you.
So, even though I got to play Nic’s guitar and he put his hand on me. He transferred, this is all just an example, you get that didn’t really happen. I’m not going to get his guitar now and go play like him, but, even though, suddenly the anointing of the musician comes upon me and now lives in me, there are still somethings that is, that although it’s living in me it’s got to come upon me. Even though the blessings lives in you, the blessing must still come upon you.
Here’s where the Christians have a real difficulty because they know, in Jesus they’re blessed, but yet they don’t see the blessings coming upon them. This is what the Lord said to me yesterday when the truck came past me. He said, “John, as long as you are on this road, behind this truck, you can not escape the blessing. It came upon you suddenly, it overtookay you and as long as you rode behind that truck, you could not get away from the blessing.” That dust, just was all over me.
Now, I got that revelation because from the moment I started cycling, I just had this, spiritual moments with God. I just started to say how great God is. I allowed it, it didn’t matter who was or who wasn’t with me and how many neighbourhoods we passed, you know, townships or little farm villages, that we passed. I was just most of the day on my bike, saying how great God is, how awesome He is, I want to, what a great day it is, I’m having, what a great blessed day, my day is. Eventually, I was bursting out in song and making up songs and just singing all kinds of words. I was worshipping God and the blessing of God was just flowing out of my spirit, yesterday. When it got to kilometer, like, 80, I kind of started quieting down a little bit because you know, then I was getting a bit moeg. But, so then I had to hold my oxygen, but not a lot, I mean, I was still there. Hallelujah.
I ask you this morning, do you believe the blessing is in you? Are you a Christian? Is Jesus in you? If you’re a Christian and Jesus is in you, then you are blessed because He lives in you. Jesus, in you knows exactly how to live your life. Do you know that? The Jesus in you knows exactly how to live your life. What’s got to happen, is that the Jesus in you, has got to reveal to you what the best life is for you to live.
So, now if Nic says, “No John listen, now you have the anointing of the rock, the rock guitarist on you, but I better show you a few things, how to play the guitar otherwise you’re going to mess this whole thing up.” Just being anointed with the rock star anointing doesn’t do it. “Well, what have I got to do, Nic?” “Come let me show you some scales, let me show you some finger exercises, let me show you some rhythm exercises that you got to do. Let me show you how to follow a musical tempo, a musical rhythm.” “Hey Nic, that’s quite a lot of stuff to learn, hey. I just felt the anointing but I’ve got to learn all these things on the guitar.”
Well, if you want the anointing, you got to learn how to actually… “And there’s a very important thing, John, that you don’t really know, is that when you start playing the guitar, your fingers get sore. And every time you play the steel strings your fingers get sore.” “Ahh, I’m not sure I want this anointing anymore, because you’re making me do stuff that I haven’t done before.” But I know what the best life is for you, as a rock-star musician and it’s got to start by, “Let me show you basic scales and how to get your fingers hard. Without that you don’t know. Hold the guitar like this: play these chords, da-da-da-da-da-da-da [Pastor John making sounds of playing chords on the guitar] go up and down [Pastor John making sounds of playing chords on the guitar].”
“What’s this doing, it’s doing nothing for me. I can’t hear the music, I mean, I feel the music, da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da [Pastor John making sounds of playing chords on the guitar]. What you’re doing to me?” “I’m teaching you how to live the best life, you could ever live.” Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da [Pastor John making sounds of playing chords on the guitar]. “Okay, now you got a few “D, D’s” [music chords] . Let’s see, can you play the E chord? Here’s a E, here’s the C, so let’s… these chord structures go together and if you play a B7, then it’s better to go and play after a B7, maybe you play a E minus 7 or E sharp 7th and then you have a progression of Chords that go with that.
So, normally you’d play a C with a D with an A, you know, or an E minor you’d play with other kind of minor chords and, “Oh, so, I’ve got to learn all of that?” “Yes, here this song that has all these chords in it.” I’m not even close to learning what Nic is learning, but I feel the music. “Okay John, so you’ve got to come everyday, everyday I want to see you do this, da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da, [Pastor John making sounds of playing chords on the guitar]. “I don’t want to do this Nic, man.” You want to play the music like I play the music? You got to do the things that I do to play the music.
You see Jesus says, I’m living in you the anointing for living life blessed and prosperous and full of the glory of God is already in you. You just have to learn how not to think for yourself, but think the way I think because your will is your platform and your worship is your power.
So, in John 20:29, 29 Jesus said to him, to Thomas, Because you have seen Me, Thomas, do you now believe (trust, have faith)? Blessed and happy and to be envied are those who have never seen Me and yet have believed and adhered to and trusted and relied on Me. (John 20:29 AMPC)
So, Thomas basically, you know, after Jesus died he didn’t believe that He was raised from the dead and then he saw Him and then Jesus said to him, “You doubting Thomas, you lived with me, you even hear me prophesy I’m coming back, and when everyone else said I was alive you still did not believe… then you only believe when you touch me.” You only believed when you touched me. Blessed are those who never see Me, yet they believe. That’s all of us, we haven’t seen Him with our eyes but we believe Him because He lives in our spirit.
So, if you believe that He lives in your spirit, then you must believe that He knows what is best for you and that He actually wants you to live the kind of life that He lives. Otherwise, why would He come and live inside of you? Let me just tell you something, He never just came to live inside of you, with an idea that you must go and save the world. I’m shooting a holy cow and many, many preachers will preach exactly the opposite of what I am saying in this pulpit today.
Jesus didn’t save you so that you can go and preach the Gospel. That’s not why He saved you. He saved you because He loved you and He saved you for you. He wants you to become like Him for you. Now, when you know all those things about Him you want to go and tell someone else, but He didn’t save you so you could go and save others. It’s like I’m going to have a baby child because I need this baby child to reproduce 10 more other children. The only reason I am having this child is to reproduce 10 more other children. That’s not a reason to have a child. The reason you want to have a child is because you want to have all the experiences of the responsibility, the joy, the connection, the love of having a child in your life that comes from your love, right?
You don’t want to say I’m going to make a baby so that that baby can make more, 10 babies so that those 10 babies can take care of me when I am old. That’s not a reason to have babies. The reason you have a child is because you want to have a relationship with the child. It was the greatest, greatest joy in my life when my wife fell pregnant for the first time because I wanted to be a father. I was only 21 years old but I wanted to be a father so bad. I had dreamt about being a father and my whole life, I endeavoured to live with my sons as a father, in friendship with them, in life with them, in discipline with them, as a father to them and still, we are. I’d say, if you want to know truly, my sons are my besties and their wives are pretty close to that for me, too. I mean that’s how good a relationship I have with them, that we interact about everything about our lives together and we share fun together, we have a lot of… but I worked on that because I wanted that in my life.
So it is with Jesus, Jesus didn’t get you, didn’t offer you salvation so you can get born again so that the next day you must go and get other people born again. So that He is only creating born-again making machines. He, you have a relationship with Jesus, and He wants you to become the best you, you can become, that looks like Him, because the best you looks like Him. Hallelujah.
A lot of what the challenge is, in our world today, is when people say, ‘I’m a Christian’ and I’m not seeing all the benefits of being a Christian, I’m don’t. It’s like if I pray to God and I ask God something and it doesn’t happen, then I kind of, I don’t know what to do next. That’s because you don’t know Him yet.
I had an experience where I asked Nic to lay hands on me and especially because I wanted to bring the contrast, lay hands on me and put your spirit of, of the musician of the rock and roll musician on me. Now I’ve got it, but now, if I don’t go and spend time with Nic, who is ready and willing and able to teach me how to play guitar and then when I go to him, he says do this, do this, do this. Then he says “Okay John, now you must go and practice for a week.” I go home, I’ve got the anointing, I’ve got the desire because it came from him. I’ve got the desire and I’ve got the anointing, I even have the sound, that I want to learn how to play, but I just don’t practice. What happens when I get back to Nic next week? “Did you practice?” “No.” “Well, let’s start again.”
“No, we don’t have to start again.” “No, we have to start again, because if you don’t practice, you don’t know what to do next and you can only get to ‘next’ when you know what to do first. So, let’s practice again.” Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da “But, I already know what to do.” Your knowledge is not enough, you have to experience this. You’ve got to live this out. “But I know what to do.” No, no, “you have to play,” da-da-da-da “but I know this”, it’s not knowledge that is going to get you into playing, it’s the playing that’s going to get you into playing.
When Christians come to church and they say, “I know what faith is.” I know you know what faith is, but knowing what faith is doesn’t make you a faith person. Because the knowledge of faith doesn’t give you faith. You have to live in faith to be able to have the results of faith. “Okay, okay, Pastor John, I get what you’re saying. I know exactly what you’re saying. You got to do faith, in order to have faith. So, how do you do faith?” Faith comes by? Hearing. And hearing by? The Word of God. Okay, you are the professional musician, Nic. So, here is what you got to do, I declare that I am blessed, I am a son of God, I am blessed, and I thank You that as a son of God, I receive all the knowledge, all the wisdom, all the understanding, all the insight and all the help, all the truth; it’s all in John chapter 16 and 17. The Holy Spirit is my Helper, He is my Truth Giver, He is the one who stands by me, He teaches me, He leads me, He guides me; I thank You Lord that as a Christian, I receive all of that.
Okay, now, where is somewhere that you really need faith to help you get through? Well, in my experience, you really need faith, most people need faith to work for yourself, in your job or in your finances, or in your marriage or home, with your kids; something that is important for you. Right? Don’t look at me like ‘hmmmm’ behind those masks this morning.
If you need God to work for you on your finances, you can’t say “Just teach me about finances and then I’ll get the results”, or I lead you in one confession, in one prayer of blessing on your finances and I got it now, “Okay, where is the money? Where is God coming through for me?” That is what, now you know about faith, but now you got to live faith. So, living faith says, “Hey, today, Lord I get up and I bless You today and I thank You that my needs are met today because I am learning by faith to give You thanksgiving and honour and glory for all of my needs, not just what I can do. All of my needs. You meet my needs because Your Word says that I shouldn’t worry, I shouldn’t be anxious, I shouldn’t be thoughtful about what I should eat or drink or wear, or where I should sleep. I should give my life over to You and this is the way that You have taught me to do it. I praise You, I thank You, I give You honour that You meet my needs.
Now, I’m doing da-da-da-da. Thank you, Jesus, thank You, Jesus, and so the Lord wants you to tithe because tithing shows you that you trust Him and I’m not even going to go near to my message of trusting this morning. Essentially, when you believe God, you’ve got to trust Him. That’s what the Word is. I’ve got to trust Him. What we happen to do as Christians is, we have Christian knowledge and then we trust ourselves. When you trust yourselves, you say, “My will is my platform for my deliverance, but I worship what myself does, and so what I worship what myself does gives me power to get what myself says I can get.”
If you don’t understand what I’m saying now, I’ve been teaching this for some weeks, listen again to the message. That’s another way of getting, to learn how to play the guitar properly, is you keep listening to the message, get it in you. When you hear me say these things, write it down and say it. Hallelujah. Praise the Lord.
I’ve been married to my wife a very long time, I look much younger than the amount of years that I’ve been married to my wife, but I did tell you I had my first child when I was 21. I won’t tell you how old he is but I’ve been married a long time. I want to tell you, in all the years that we’ve been married, we have a stunning marriage, we know how to be intimate with each other, both emotionally, spiritually and physically; even in these years of our lives. We know how to do it, we engage it, we love it, we flow with it. We know how to be intimate with the Lord, Jesus Christ, together. Our marriage has become an example to many, many other people’s marriages.
There are many people in our churches and in people around the world that have been influenced by the quality and the strength of our marriage. Do you know how we got to have a strong marriage? We found somebody that said, “In marriage, you go, da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da “Nah, but I didn’t sign up for marriage for this, I want music in my marriage.” “You want music? Da-da-da-da-da-da-da.” You want to learn this? You have got to take time. How does that look like in marriage? What it looks like in marriage is, when you wake up in the morning, you don’t wake up in the morning and say “My own self-personality says I have the right to be very angry for the first half-hour. Don’t touch me, don’t speak to me, don’t come into the same bathroom as me; it’s my space, I’ve got to get clear of my space.”
What you are actually saying is, for the first half-hour, it’s your will is the only thing that matters anywhere, anyplace and anytime. You know that’s not reasonable, otherwise, you would perhaps even do that for the whole day. You know it’s not reasonable so you just make it for half an hour. Don’t shout me down because I’m preaching really well today. So, your first thing that you’ve got to get over yourself is if I want a good marriage, I’ve got to go and get rid of this thing that is [Pastor John making growing sounds], first thing in the morning.
How do you do that? When you wake up in the morning you just say “Right now I choose to put my hand on my heart, I am a son of God, and I thank You Jesus that You bless me with the ability to say kind words, be kind, have a good attitude because my head has been leading me wrong all these years, but the real Jesus in me wants to jump out of this bed and tell my partner how amazing he or she is. How wonderful it is and what a great day today is going to be. How spectacular our life in the Lord, Jesus Christ is going to be.” Your partner might say “Ahhgg, man, such noise, so early in the morning. Shut up, jy.” But even when you do that, I’m telling you those life words that come out of you, are so powerful, they energise your partner.
That’s just some of the basics of being blessed, that you live with the blessing in you. Then occasionally you get around people who have got that blessing upon them and then you ride in the cloud and you just want to keep hanging around those people. That when you’re around their marriage, “Ah, this marriage feels good, I just want to get what they have got, to hear what they say, do what they do, because it feels good.” That’s the God way of just causing you to ride behind a truck, where the dust gets on you. You can’t get away from it, it’s just beautiful, energising you, helping you, strengthening you, giving you all the good things that God has got for your life.
Stand to your feet, please. Did you enjoy that? Did you get something out of that? I’ve got much more to teach you on this. Are you looking forward to this? Hallelujah. Praise the Lord. The first thing you’ve got to do is make Jesus Lord and Saviour of your life. Let’s make sure that we are all Christians right now. Put your hand on your heart and say “Jesus, thank You that You are my Lord and Saviour. Thank You that You saved me from myself and all my rubbish. From today, You are helping me to live like You and be like You in all of my life. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
I bless you. May the love of God, the joy of the Lord, the peace of God be upon you. No weapon formed against you will prosper. No sickness or plague will come near you or your dwelling place. I want to tell you the Lord has been on my case, I’ve been separating and part of this blessing is part of that conversation, I’m telling you the blessing that is coming into your business. Don’t worry about that climate, don’t worry about what they are saying about Covid. You are in the right church to hear about the blessing and you are going to start speaking blessing and I’m going to go da-da-da-da-da about your business, about your income, about the stuff. Amen. “Moenie worry nie, watch net, God’s got us covered. Get out of here. I love you all. Thanks for coming.
© 2023 – Heritage of Faith Ministries International
TOUCH | TEACH | TRAIN | TRANSFER
