Scripture reference: Genesis 22:1-2 (NKJV); Genesis 22:7-8 (NKJV); Genesis 22:15-17 (NKJV); Romans 15:22-24 (NKJV)
Hallelujah. I thank You, Lord, that this morning, we have a destiny, and You have opened doors for us that no man can close. I thank You, Father, that even as the Word is declared and ministered this morning, I pray that we once again step up to a new level and enter into a new dimension of our own walk with God. As a body, we go together, we strive together, we grow together, we are strengthened together, and we live together in the love of God. Thank You for all that You have done for us and continue to do for us. Thank You, Lord. I thank You, Father, that every heart is ready to receive. Every ear is ready to hear, and every mind is ready and receptive, and their hearts are ready and receptive to the Word of God today. In Jesus’ name. Amen. Amen. You may be seated. Praise the Lord. Glory to God.
I’m glad you’re here this morning, and I’m glad to be here this morning. Hallelujah. It seems like I’ve had a whirlwind month or so, but praise God, He strengthens me in every way and in everything. Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord. It is my heart’s desire, as I was meditating before the Lord, on my way back home from the USA, as I was travelling with Brother Jerry, I had a strong desire that what I have to say today, you will see with spiritual eyes and you will be able to receive a spiritual impartation. Because I may show you pictures and I may share some facts, and I may share some things with you. That’s not really what it’s about. What it’s about is receiving something spiritual.
I want to start by sharing with you from Genesis chapter 22, verse 1, ¹ Now it came to pass after these things that God tested Abraham, and said to him, “Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” 2 Then He said, “Take now your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you.” (Genesis 22:1-2 NKJV) It’s interesting that God was about to test Abraham. Well, He was testing him. That’s what the scripture says; He was testing him. He was testing him with the very most precious thing that he had in his life. I guess one could say that he loved Sarah all his life, but besides Sarah, Isaac was his most precious thing, and here God is asking him to sacrifice him.
Those are letters that you read on a page. These are letters that I’m reading on the page that you are reading today. These are words that you’re hearing. How do you and I, how do we begin to experience what Abraham must have experienced? Right at that moment, when the Most High God, who brought him out of a land to a land that He was yet to show him. The Most High God that he had followed. The Most High God, who had said to him, Ishmael will not be the son of your blessing. The Highest God who said, Isaac, is the son of the blessing that through Isaac, all the nations of the world will be blessed. This Most High God, this God that he never knew that introduced him, that chose him. This God is now the God that is asking him in the older years of his life to sacrifice his only son.
You and I can hear the story, but to have that encounter where God is calling you so that you hear an audible voice, and He’s leaving no options on the table. There are no options on the table. There’s no debate on the table. There is not even a question: Can I rather take all of my cattle and sacrifice them all? There was not a question in God’s mind; it was, you’ve got a son, your only son. Sacrifice him. No debate. Order. Command.
What do you think it does to the heart of a father like that? It must have been like a very knife going through his heart, himself. Right? I mean, how can you and I experience that? We read it; we recognise that actually, this is one of the most significant moments in eternity because, without Abraham’s obedience, Jesus doesn’t get to come. God has to choose another man. He has to redo. Start again. We have no idea of the significance eternally of that one instruction. “Abraham, go and sacrifice your son.”
Abraham, he knows he’s walked away with God. He knows he has a son because of God. When Sarah could never have a son, God made it so that they could have a son. So, he has a trust in God. So, why is it that God would test him? When he already had, when He knew that he trusted God? Why would He test him? Well, part of it was a prophetic reckoning that needed to be done on the earth, that someone else would sacrifice their son so that there was a record so that Jesus (God) could sacrifice His son. There was a prophetic reason for him having to do that, but there was another reason for him having to do that; it was because this was the most significant offering that he could ever give.
If all the nations of the earth were going to be blessed through him, then the sacrifice had to equal the blessing. If He was going to bring about the stars of the heavens, all the nations of the earth would be multiplied. He said to Abraham, “Look at the stars, look at the sand, so will your seed be upon the earth.” If there was going to be that kind of blessing that was going to come, there also had to be a recognition of the God that would make it come. The very thing that was going to make it come, he had to give it as a sacrifice so that the rest could come.
Now, as I said before, I’m trusting that you will recognise that this morning, the Spirit of God is on me. Okay, I said to Empie, “Give me some tissues in my pocket in case I don’t make it without tears.” Because the power of God’s command and the obedience to God’s command has such capability and such future destiny in it, that to disobey what God says to do, is almost, it’s unthinkable. You know, and if you recognise when God is speaking, and you recognise when God is talking, then everything in your life comes into alignment with that.
I go to Genesis chapter 22, verse seven, 7 But Isaac spoke to Abraham his father and said, “My Father!” and he said, “Here I am, my son.” Then he said, “Look, the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?” 8 And Abraham said, “My son, God will provide for Himself the lamb for a burnt offering.” So the two of them went together. (Genesis 22:7-8 NKJV) What was happening was that Abraham, trusting in the Most High God, was speaking the future prophetically, but he was speaking the future with a trust that God would not let him actually take his son, but that God would provide through his obedience. Because to this point, everything Abraham had done, God had provided because of his obedience. Hallelujah.
I can tell you that God will never let you go short if you are obedient. Never. He is compelled by the Word of God, by His own Word. He is compelled by His love, and He is compelled by your obedience to answer, always.
Genesis 22, verse 15, says, 15 Then the Angel of the Lord called to Abraham a second time out of heaven, 16 and said: “By Myself I have sworn, says the Lord, because you have done this thing, and have not withheld your son, your only son. (Genesis 22:15-16 NKJV) He was ready to go through with it, and God had to stop him; that is complete trust in the Most High God. You can only trust in a living God that way. You can’t trust in an idol like that. You can only trust in a living God like that. Who speaks to you, and you speak to Him? He says because you have not withheld your son, your only son, 17 blessing I will bless you, and multiplying I will multiply you. Do you see that the sacrifice and the prophetic word of what he declared way before has now got the substance to come into being? The sacrifice had to equal the obedience and had to equal the blessing.
You only get to have this kind of relationship with God when you’ve gone through many other tests if I want to call them that. They’re not tests; they are obediences to the Word of God. You only get to have this relationship with God when you’ve been obedient in other things. “Abraham, leave this place and go to a place that I will show you.” “I’ve never met You, God. I don’t know You. My people don’t worship You. Who are you? But I’ll be obedient, and I’ll go.”
The obedience of, “Abraham, now that you’re in this land, I want you to go and circumcise all the men amongst you.” What kind of god is this? Asking me to go and circumcise all the males that have come with me, my servants, all of the people that are with me. Yet his obedience has brought him to this place where God could have a covenant relationship with Abraham, where He knew that if He asked him to give his son, he would obey. Then He speaks from heaven. And He said, 17 blessing I will bless you, and multiplying I will multiply your descendants as the stars of the heaven and as the sand which is on the seashore; and your descendants shall possess the gate of their enemies. 18 In your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed, because you have obeyed My voice.” (Genesis 22:17-18 NKJV)
Do you understand, and do you see that it’s the obedience that could bring about the blessing? It’s the obedience that could bring about the covenant future. It’s the obedience that could make all things work. The obedience and the sacrifice, the sacrifice was the everything. Everything.
So, I come to give you a report back, and I come to speak to you about my trip with Brother Jerry, and it’s a great privilege to be, invited to come and do something that has been on Brother Jerry’s heart for twenty or thirty years. I’ve known Brother Jerry for a long time. I’ve known him and have been walking with him for twenty-six years. I’ve seen him go from a fifty-year-old man to a seventy; next birthday, he will be seventy-six. I’ve watched as his life has been blessed by God. A lot of it has been an observation. A lot of it has been testimony. A lot of it has been observation, at close hand, but in these last years, God has done something very, very special for me and, by definition, and by default, for us.
My story with Brother Jerry doesn’t begin two Sundays ago, this trip. My story with Brother Jerry begins from 2014 when a whole bunch of us went to the USA, and I sat in a boardroom with Brother Jerry. I said, “Brother Jerry.” So this would have made him around seventy years old, sixty-nine, seventy. I went to him, and I said to him, “Brother Jerry, my sons are your sons, spiritual sons, and my strength and my ministry is yours. Even though it is my church that God has made me the shepherd over, I say that we will do whatever you require.” And, you know, he gave us a word, at that time, “Visitations, Demonstrations, and Manifestations of the Spirit of God,” and that was the beginning of 4x4x40. God led us to pray for Brother Jerry, and then it wasn’t too long after that, and he had a heart operation, and then he had a throat operation, and he nearly died.
In the meantime, through all of this, God gave me the opportunity to go and spend five weeks with Brother Jerry, commanding me almost without a command, yet commanding me, compelling me, in telling me to go and spend time with him. On both occasions, there was nothing; there was no requirement on my part or his part that he would invite me to go with him and be and do anything with him or that I was asking him to take me anywhere with him. I went there completely obedient to God to say, “Whatever must be, will be. Whatever you want to have happen, you will make happen.”
I literally went there to go and spend my time, my days and my hours, if necessary, praying in the Word, just reading the Word, doing whatever I needed to do. I had no; I had no appointments; I had no preaching engagements. I went there for no other reason than to be around Brother Jerry. And so he did a lot of things that included me, and we spent a lot of time together. That was quite already something unique and special. Right?
Then the very next year, the Lord said, “Now go and do it for seven weeks.” Five weeks was challenging enough, and seven weeks seemed like even a mountain to me. Sharon will tell you that after three and a half weeks, I phoned her and I said, “ I think I’ve done what I’ve needed to do here. I’m coming home.” I knew I couldn’t, but I wanted to, you know? But then God did amazing things, and I had an opportunity to spend a day with Brother Jerry and Brother Copeland. It’s a day that most people would give their eye teeth for, and their left arm, and their right arm; to spend a day, a whole day, in the presence of Brother Copeland and Brother Jerry.
What an honour that was. So then, COVID comes, and in the meantime, we gave an Irrational Honour Seed to Brother Jerry, and God has done marvellous things in our ministry. Significant, marvellous things have happened in our ministry since the first seed that we gave. Don’t you think? I mean, if you look at the ministry that we were five years ago, compared to the ministry that we are today. We are a completely different people. We are a completely different Ecclesia. We are a different church. We, as a people, have changed. We as people have become much more focused on following the destiny of God and assignment that God has for our lives. We are that people. Hallelujah.
God has said he will take the children, and He’s taking them, and along with the children, the parents are being dragged. No, they came along willingly. Praise the Lord. And it’s a wonderful thing; that God has done such an amazing thing because we all had to face ourselves in those moments. We had to find out what’s really in our hearts, both children and parents, and everybody else watching. Right?
Don’t look at me “squiff” now.
I’ve got a little app here, and now it’s taking me back to a menu. So, which one must I press? Because this is all the songs; oh, Pastor John’s photos? I’ve got it. Play. I’m getting it. [Scrolling through photos on App] No, I don’t want that picture. Not that one either. No. I’m learning to use this app here. I’m doing this. I’m learning how to use this app. No, no, no, no, no, no. Yes. Okay.
[Pastor John shows photographs] That’s me at the airport. Just, O.R. Tambo, just getting ready to leave. At that moment in time, I was quite physically; I was quite tired. I was looking forward to getting on the plane to go and go and sleep on the plane, you know? Praise the Lord. There were things that tried to stop me from leaving South Africa. They deemed my COVID, my COVID test to not be valid; that I had done here in Witbank, and I had to go and get another COVID test done.
Anyway, a whole bunch of things happened, and ultimately, it all ended up that I arrived in the USA three and a half hours later than I should have, and Brother Jerry was expecting my arrival. I want you to understand that I’m going to be with Brother Jerry on a very special tour; my timeline is very tight. Brother Jerry is already waiting for me. Made space for me on his aircraft, and he’s waited. He’s shifted his whole agenda for me to arrive at ten o’clock. Now I’m arriving at one o’clock.
When I arrive at one o’clock, lo and behold, for the first time in thirty years of going to America, security flags me, and they pull me into a big backroom, and they want to know what I’m coming to do in America. They questioned me for half an hour, and then they let me go. Surprise, surprise.
I’m going to read you a scripture out of Romans in a short while. You don’t have to put the scripture up. I’m just going to read it to you. Keep the photos here. Romans chapter 15, verse 22, says, ²² For this reason I also have been much hindered from coming to you. (Romans 15:22 NKJV) If we think that our lives, as Christians, have no spiritual activity around us when we are doing something significant for God, then again, I have to tell you, you are mistaken. You are uninformed because whatever you are going to do from God, for God, the devil is going to try and stop you and hinder you, and the more significant thing that you’re going to do, the greater the hindrance the enemy will try and bring.
Anyway, I had the good sense that once they brought me out, I went straight to the toilet. There was someone there to pick me up and take me to the aeroplane. While I am in the car, the person who is driving the car; you know him, Eric, he was here with brother Joe. Eric phones Brother Jerry, and he says, “I’ve got him in the car. We’re on our way.” Brother Jerry says to him, “ Does he still have to go to the toilet because we’re ready to go?” So, I had the good sense to go to the toilet before we got to the plane.
Then we got onto the plane. They wanted me to sit next to Brother Jerry in the front, you know? So, I said to Brother Jerry, “Please, can I sit in the back. I just need to relax.” So, he said, “You go sit in the back, put your feet up on the chair, just relax.” [Referring to picture on screen] And that’s my feet on the chair inside of his plane, and we are on our way to go and do what we must do.
We arrive at this little, this little airport. It’s near a town called Cherokee, which is where we are starting the tour from, Cherokee. [Referring to picture on screen] I don’t know if you can see the sign good enough there? It’s Macon County Local Airport. It’s the closest airport that could take a jet landing at it, and so we landed there, and then we had another half hour to drive to where the hotel was.
I’m just telling you how God strengthened me, supernaturally strengthened me. Because the Wednesday before we had a ride and I had a tumble, and then I had a Race to the Sun, then we did a live thing from the Race to the Sun, or the Triathlon, got on the plane, flew twenty-six hours or whatever it was, to eventually get there – twenty-eight hours – flew another two hours. When I got there, my first point of order was that I had to familiarise myself with a motorbike; because tomorrow morning early, with Brother Jerry, we go.
The countryside that we were going to ride in- I took this picture from the… because you unload all the luggage at the back of the jet – and so I took this picture just to show you where we landed, the kind of countryside that we landed in. And that’s the plane. That’s the Falcon 50. It’s beautiful, isn’t it? It’s an answer from God. It’s a blessing from God. Hallelujah.
And so, of course, this is Brother Jerry’s bike. When he gave me the bike, the bike was parked there. We arrived there with the bike parked there. Everybody’s ready to ride. They’re all waiting for me. The whole trip, they were going to do an activity in the afternoon. This is a very important detail – I want you to just – this is the beginning of the story. The important detail is that Brother Jerry decided that he was going to wait for me. So what happened was he then said: “Let’s shift everything back so that we can accommodate John.”
So, what was going to happen was that we were going to go for a ride in the afternoon. When I arrived on Monday afternoon, we were going to go for a ride and see a particular spot and then come back to the hotel. So now, because I’m delayed three and a half hours, that ride doesn’t happen. Okay, and so I feel the responsibility. All these people have arrived, and now they’re waiting, and it’s – so what can I do?
Brother Jerry comes to show me this bike, and this bike has got a little special thing on the side of it: Number 18 of 200. Only two hundred of these bikes were made by Harley Davidson. Number 18 is a special thing; they had a special reason why they printed it, and so only number 18 of 200. “Brother Jerry, is this my bike?” “This is the bike you’re going to ride, John.” “Are you sure, Brother Jerry? You know this is number 18 of 200. Like, you know?” “Yes, this is your bike.” “Well, thank you, sir.”
So, it’s the Road King, which means it’s very similar to my bike, and I suspect that he chose it because he knew that the Harley that I ride here. He chose a Harley that would take very little getting used to, but anyway, I was shown the bike and made sure that everything was working. Then he makes this statement: “So John, I expect to receive this bike back in the same order that I’ve given it to you.” I took the keys, and I said: “Brother Jerry, I will find my own way.” No, you know, I mean, you know, I felt the responsibility. Praise the Lord.
And, of course, I want to just show you that the next person, Bill, and Brother Bill, is standing next to the motorbike that Brother Jerry was riding. So this is an Indian. This is not a Harley Davidson. It’s an Indian, and this is the motorbike that he’s riding. Bill is just standing next to Brother Jerry. So, of course, they wipe his bike every day, and they fill it up, and they make sure that it’s always ready for him whenever he wants to go. Just for context, the Chariot’s trailer was there, and we’re ready to go.
So, the next day, we go to a place where they give you a story of the Indian heritage. This is the man that guides you through the whole history of what happened to the different nations. Brother Jerry’s had a blood test done, a DNA test done, and there’s quite a high percentage of Cherokee in him. I’m just showing – so this guy gave us a walking tour for about two hours, and he gave us a story of all of the symbolism, and all of the habits, and all of the ways that the Indians lived, and all of their interactions with the white man, the colonial Indian people and the whole story. There are some pictures missing here, but maybe they’ll come later. We did recognise this morning that one or two seem to be out of order here.
Anyway, I’m just going to keep talking, because everywhere we went, except for that first morning, which was going to be an afternoon session. So this two-hour session that happened, we were going to do that tour in the afternoon, on Monday afternoon. This session is now happening Tuesday morning. Except for this one session, which was planned, which was prepared, and this centre is always open. For all the other points along the route that Brother Jerry wanted to visit, there was no guarantee of Brother Jerry being able to see anything that related to his heritage. So, I’m wanting to kind of give you a perspective of what’s happening here.
For many years, Brother Jerry and Brother Copeland have both known that they have a legacy and a heritage with the Indian nations. They have made it their ministry business for many, many years to minister to the Indian people. They have gone, and they have done meetings there, they’ve provided food and clothing, they have provided many, many things. Pastor Sharon and I have been to Brother Copeland’s Special Minister’s Meetings, which are normally held in January, where he – in the early years of our going there – introduced the Indian chiefs of various tribes and various reservations. One particular Indian chief, anyway, had made a big difference in his ability to communicate with the Federal Government and do good for his people. And Jerry Savelle Ministries and Kenneth Copeland Ministries, they’ve come alongside them. And there’s a long history of Brother Jerry and Brother Copeland ministering to the Indian people on the reservations.
Have you got the picture? So, Brother Jerry is now seventy-five. He has had a desire for many, many years to have an understanding and a recognition of what happened to the people. The stories that you’ve read in Westerns, and the stories and the history that you know about them is a completely different story, and a completely different history, to what is the real thing. So, he was on a mission to discover the real thing. I want you to understand for a moment that he kept pressing me and inviting me to come along on this tour. On this tour, because we covered 1250 miles in six days, and we went to many spots, I think we covered, we went through seven different states in the United States because of the route that we took.
All along the way, there were places where the stories of the Cherokee Indians, in particular, played out. It’s a gruesome, horrible, devastating story of white people who came into the Indian Territory and at first lived with them very nicely and very well. Then they discovered that there was gold in their territories, and then the greed and the power and the wealth and everything started to intervene. They started to literally, by force, remove them out of the territories that they were living in and move them to reservations. A full one-third of the Indian population died on that journey. A number of people died. Many many people died once they got to the reservations because they were already sick, they didn’t have food there, and they weren’t used to the climate.
The next part of the story is; that we stopped at a trail marker. We just arrived there – the centre’s supposed to be closed. Ginger couldn’t get hold of anybody by phone, by email, by any means at all for weeks and months. We just rode to the point because this was a place where the Indian Trail walked, they had walked to, and then a good many of them were ferried on ferries down the river to get closer to where they were going to be. So, it turns out that Brother Jerry gets to walk on the trail. This is the very trail. [Pastor John shows a picture of Brother Jerry walking on the trail] They’ve put cement over it, but literally, this is the ground that he was walking on where the Indians themselves were walking when they did that great march.
I want to tell you this story; of how this happens; Brother Jerry delays his plane and doesn’t get to do something on the Monday afternoon. He gets to do that Tuesday in the morning. We go to the next place that’s supposed to be closed, and we arrive there, and it’s open. It’s open. Not only is it open, but as we arrive there, there are other people arriving dressed in Indian attire. “We didn’t know you would be open.” “No, we’re not supposed to be open.” “Well, how come you’re open?” “We’ve set aside these two days today and tomorrow. These two days are set aside so that we will do special tours for a whole bunch of schools that are coming to do and learn about the history of the Indians.” So the centre is open. All these people, the schools haven’t arrived yet. We are there. All these people, they’ve got all their tables set out, all the weapons they used, all the tools they used, all the foodstuffs and everything. They’ve got it there, and they said, “Well, since you’re here can we give you a tour?” Brother Jerry ended up buying special little bits of trinkets and things that they had made that he wanted to have remembrance of.
They ended up having this long conversation with us about the history of the place and how many of them died waiting to get to be on the boat and had memorials there with the names of the people that they could remember. So they gave us a whole tour, and then we didn’t know about how significant this trail was, and so they told us the whole story about the trail. I can’t go into all of the details. I’m trying to give you as much as I can.
Here’s the thing. It wasn’t supposed to be open, and here it’s open for two schools, and we get to have a personal, private tour that no one from the public would have. Not only that, but they’re all there ready; all of them are there ready to tell the story to hundreds of school kids. We take our time; we spend our time, we have all of the time that we want to have, and it was probably an hour and a half, two hours. Part of which was we went to walk the trail, took pictures, and had conversations. Here’s the point of where the ferry was when they would transport them. [Ps John showing a picture of Brother Jerry on a jetty].
They were not supposed to be open, but they were open. Brother Jerry moved his plan, the whole schedule seemed to be messed up, but suddenly the place we come to is open. From that moment onwards, we went to about five different places that had nobody there when we got there. They were not supposed to be open; there was nobody there that was scheduled to give any tours, and every time within five or ten minutes of our arrival, the people arrived to open the centre. Every time they didn’t have a reason for it, or there was some other special reason for it, but every time, Brother Jerry got to have everything that his heart desired and much more and much more.
I said to the people around me, especially Bill and Ginger, I spoke to Tony, and I spoke to a couple of other people around me that I was more familiar with. I said, “If people have never experienced the favour of God on someone’s life, you cannot actually taste it until you see it happen.” I mean, literally, we walked into one centre, and there was one lady there, and she said, “Well, this is not where the action happened.” Brother Jerry went to two significant chiefs that made a lot of good things happen for the Indians; it was their burial site. It’s all down at the bottom there, and that’s where the house was, where they did a lot of their negotiations. All this stuff is down at the house, but it’s not open. The lady that runs that place she’s not supposed to be in today. So he says, “No worry, we’ll go down there, and we’ll just walk around, and we’ll look at the graves, and we’ll just go and do our thing.”
We were not there for ten minutes, and this woman came. She opens. “What do you do now?” “The lady told me you were here.” “Why are you in today?” “No, I just, you know, I thought I’d come in to make sure that everything was clean and everything was, you know.” She just arrived, opened up everything, sold us T-shirts, and sold us all the memorabilia that Brother Jerry wanted. Gave us a tour, opened up all of the things, and told us about the two gravesites. Told us about how they excavated this and put this there, and these are the two, and the whole story about the legal things, they weren’t allowed to actually bury the people there weren’t supposed to be gravestones. There weren’t supposed to be memorials, but this land was owned by private people, two white people who said that they could bury the chiefs on their land, so it wasn’t public land. It was private land at that time. So we had a whole story.
So, I was late, but God’s never late. God turns everything to the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purpose. It’s not just those who love Him because we all love Him. God turns everything to the good for those that love Him and are called to His purpose.
I just took a few pictures; I had someone take a few pictures because I was the only South African there, you know. I had to give you an idea of how I went about this; this was my signature look the whole time. I wore my bandana the whole time. That board that I’m holding in my hands there; is the only Indian language that has its own vocabulary, and therefore, newspapers were printed in the language of the Cherokee. So, the Cherokee language is the only one that has a vocabulary. Therefore, they could actually write letters, not just spoken words that people understand, but actually a vocabulary. So, I’m holding the vocabulary there.
Anyway, I’d like you to just, for a moment, consider what’s happening to me. I feel like we’re always behind time. We go to a restaurant, we come out of the restaurant, and we go up to a garage. We’re going to refuel the bikes, and now the temperature, suddenly there’s a heatwave in America. The temperatures are hitting in Fahrenheit terms, anything from ninety-eight to a hundred and three. On many of the days, the areas that we were in—was the highest only by one degree or so, but it was the highest temperature in a hundred years that we were riding in. So, we go into the restaurant, and we come back, and we’re going to refuel, and low and behold, I can’t find the bike’s keys. You can’t ride the bike for more than forty feet or a hundred feet without the keys being with the bike, but I can’t find the bike’s keys.
Everybody has waited for me on the plane. I’m carrying a significant seed that I have yet to deliver, and I lose Brother Jerry’s bike’s keys. So, what’s the answer if we don’t find the bike’s keys? We take this bike, we put it on the trailer, you get in the car, and you ride the whole tour in the car because until we get to a Harley, that can maybe duplicate the key for us.
So, other people are looking at me and just saying to me, “We’re glad we’re not you.” A couple of guys get on their bikes, and they ride down; it was just from the restaurant to the garage; it was one straight road, you know. They get down, and so I said, “No, I’m going to walk it.” So I walked. I literally walked down, kicking bushes and looking because the keys have got to be there. If it is not by the bike, they got to be, maybe dropped somewhere. So, I’m walking, and people are riding up and down with their bikes, and they’re looking for the keys.
A lady in a shop walks out and says, “Are you guys looking for something?” We say, “Yeah, we’re looking for some keys.” She says, “I have it in my shop.” She came, and she gave it and said, “Somebody came and saw some keys laying on the ground.” About forty metres, forty feet away from where the bike was. It must have fallen out of my pocket or something, but there it was. I go, “Thank you, Jesus.” [Pastor John wipes his face with relief].
I want you to understand and recognise again that you are listening to the story, but the emotions that I’m experiencing and the pressure that’s on me is immense. I made everybody late. We are driving in all of this heat now because everything is late, but everything’s working out, but I’m feeling the heat literally. Anyway, so we get to the next Harley Davidson dealership, and I went, and I bought a special keychain, and I put it on there, and I made sure that it was tied and hooked to the belt of my jeans everywhere I went so that it didn’t happen again. Praise the Lord.
So, because all of this happens, they are constantly changing the route and constantly, this place is not available. We’re going here. We’re going to eat here. So, they’re constantly adapting to the fact that we started three and a half hours late. Everything is changing, but every time we go to a place, God makes it the best. The best thing that could have happened.
So, we go; Brother Jerry wants to go to an Indian dealership, and the whole route over seven States, the only Indian dealership was not an Indian dealership; it was a dealership that was a multipurpose motorbike sales place. So, Indian motorbikes were a significant part of their sales, but they were selling things like Polaris, four by fours and things, and you know, and other bikes. Obviously, the community wasn’t big enough for them to only focus on Indians, but they had a significant amount of memorabilia, little bits and things that you could buy, clothing and stuff like that that were Indian.
So, I walk into the shop, and this motorbike is standing there. Is that nice or what, hey? This the first time, because of the way that they set the bike up, the leader of the tour, which was a guy from Missouri, leader of the tour, rides, leads the way, and then the President of the Chariots of Light Club, which is Bill, then Brother Jerry, and then it’s Ginger, and then it’s me. So, wherever we arrive, I’m one of the first four bikes to stop, and so always, I am off my bike first, or quite quickly, partly I would help. I would help Brother Jerry with himself and Tony and Bill; we would help Brother Jerry with his bike. I would normally get off my bike quite quickly, get my helmet off, and get my gloves off. It’s very hot, we all want to get into the air conditioning places. This day, I get off my bike, and I just stand there. I’m standing, and everybody is off into the air-conditioned place.
The day before, the Lord began to deal with me because I said, “Lord, the giving of our gift, the giving of our significant seed, our seed of honour, I need You to give me the timing of it and give me the way that I can give it.” So, I am meditating on this way ahead of time. I’m praying, and I’m asking the Lord way ahead of time because I think it’s going to happen at the end of the tour. The Lord says that—He begins to speak to me, and He says, He just, the thing begins to come in my spirit. “Be prepared for a gift. Be prepared for a gift.”
I don’t know what that means. What do you give someone who’s got everything that you know that he wants? Right, be prepared for a gift. I walk into this Indian shop, and I notice that all the guys are around. Everybody, everybody’s sitting and drinking water, taking a load off. I see Brother Jerry walking around this bike. Now, I know Brother Jerry well enough that if he stands there a long time looking at a bike. He’s looking. He likes it. I stood inside, and I just observed him. I looked around, and I made sure, and I observed him, and he’s standing there, and he’s looking. He’s looking, and he’s walking around the bike. I stood there for maybe two minutes. That doesn’t sound like a long time, but it is – in a moment like that, it is. I’m standing there, and he’s walking around the bike. I don’t even go into the store, I walk straight up to Brother Jerry, and I say, “Brother Jerry, you like this bike?” He said, “John, this is an amazing bike.” He says, “I’ve tried to buy this bike twice because it’s a special edition. So, he likes special editions. So, it’s a special edition; it’s got all these things on it. I’ve tried to buy it twice. One time it was gone before I got there. The second time it was on the floor, but it was sold; it had just been sold, and he said I walk into this shop, and here is this bike.
So I said, “So what’s the price on this bike, Brother Jerry?” He looks at me, and he gives me the number on the bike. So, I said, “You really like this bike, Brother Jerry? He says, “I really like it.” He says, “I did not expect to find this bike here. Not in this place. This is not even a big dealership.” I said, “Well, Brother Jerry, if you want it, Heritage of Faith South Africa will buy it for you.” [Congregation rejoices].
This is the significance of your seed. This is your honour, seed. Brother Jerry wanted me to tell you when I said that to him right there. You know, Brother Jerry, he grew up at a time with men where cowboys don’t cry. So, crying for him as a man is not a thing to do, but he turned around, and he walked away because he was really choked up. Tears filled his eyes, and then when he composed himself, he came back to me, and he said, “John, you mean the Heritage of Faith people have taken up an offering to buy the seed? I said, “Brother Jerry, yesterday, I asked you that when we get back, I need an hour of your time because I have something for you.” So, he said, “Yes, I remember you saying, and we agreed that it would be on the Monday when we get back or the Tuesday, we’d spend an hour together,” because I don’t want to mix something that’s casual with something that’s formal.
But the Lord told me to be ready for a gift, and so I said, “When I asked you yesterday,” I said, “This was what I was going to deliver; I was going to deliver this in cash to you.” I said, “But since this is what you want, the Lord prepared my heart already yesterday to be ready for a gift. This is what we’ll buy for you.” So, we bought it for him. We paid for it. We paid the taxes on it. We paid for the special bags that he bought for the bike. We sat there for two hours while he signed all the papers. They registered the bike in his name. They did everything; he just couldn’t ride it because he had to licence it in Texas. They loaded it on the bike (trailer) after they went through all the special features that are only on this Indian that are not on other Indians because it was a special edition.
Do you know that if I wasn’t late, we would not have gone to that dealership? I said, “Lord, whatever was planned, You always knew You could turn it around, and You could fix it. You could make it so that we will get to the place and that the seed could be given at the right time.” Here’s the thing about it. Brother Jerry likes his bike so much, he’s going to be riding it a lot. Because he, when the engineer showed him the features that it had on the bike and the things that you could do with this bike that all these other Indian bikes you can’t do with. He said, I mean, this is amazing. I mean, he was just wowed by it, and you know Bill, who makes sure that Brother Jerry’s bikes are always taken care of when they’re on tour. He knows the Indian cycles as well as Brother Jerry, and so he was learning on behalf of Brother Jerry so that they could work this thing through together because it’s a lot more features on it than it is on the bike that he’s riding. Hallelujah.
Do you know what this means? This means that our cash is not something that he spends on a holiday, and it’s forgotten. This means that God ordained it that our honour seed would be something that would stand in his garage, that he would ride, and every time he rode it, he would know that we, South Africa, Heritage of Faith, we have blessed him with this. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Glory to Jesus. It was not in my heart to do this. So that’s us outside after he has taken delivery of the bike. Hallelujah. Praise the Lord. So, praise Jesus.
I do want to tell you that we went to a restaurant called Lambert’s Cafe and you’ll see me wearing a T-shirt and using a mug. It’s the most spectacular restaurant that I’ve I’ve experienced in America; it’s literally the restaurant of throwing; they throw rolls at you. I’m sure that they’ve got baseball players that throw rolls at you; there is literally a seating capacity of seven hundred people. And they literally walk up and down the aisles and throw rolls at you, hot steaming rolls, they throw rolls at you. It’s like the biggest vibe there, that you eat the roll. And then he throws it. And I mean, those guys are so accurate. That’s why I said they must hire baseball players because they throw the roll into your hands, and if you miss it, that’s on you, but they don’t actually care whether you need to have three rolls thrown at you or not. If you catch it, that’s yours. You know, and then when you’re finished your roll, if you want more and they just keep walking up and down the restaurant, and they throw rolls. It just keeps coming. So, the rolls are flying all over the place all the time. People are ducking, and people are, I mean, it’s just an amazing restaurant, you know.
It’s one of Brother Jerry’s favourite restaurants; I didn’t know this. Sometimes when he goes and visits with Keith Moore, it is about a hundred miles away from Keith Moore’s property, from his ministry, and so they sometimes come to this restaurant to come and eat. This is how Brother Jerry, this is one of his favourite positions to take when everybody’s listening to his story. I took this photograph to give you an idea that this was really something that turned out to be much more than he would have dreamt that this trip would have meant to him. As we were riding along, I think there were ten of us that did the whole tour. As we were riding along, people would come for two days and then leave the place, and others would join and leave because we rode through seven states so people couldn’t take all the time off like normal. A lot of people joined the tour as they could.
On the last day that I was in the USA, the day before I left, I should say not the day I flew, that last day. Brother Jerry and Miss Carolyn took me out for lunch. At the end of the lunch, Brother Jerry said, “John, do you want key lime pie?” “Yes, sir.” He wants key lime pie. This is key lime pie. He says these guys make amazing key lime pie. “Yes, sir.” If you see me on a diet for the rest of the year, you’ll know why. This is us sitting in the restaurant with the key lime pie: Brother Jerry, Miss Carolyn and myself.
Some of the slides that I wanted to show you are now coming up. All along the way, Brother Jerry, when we would get to significant points, he would actually call me, and he would say, “John, come stand here,” and he would have people come and take photographs of me and him.
I think I can stand here. Let me stand here with my phone. I should have thought of this earlier. [Pastor John shows pictures of him and Brother Jerry]. I didn’t ask for this picture. Brother Jerry asked for this picture. I didn’t ask for this picture. Brother Jerry asked for this picture. Hallelujah.
What can I say? When God places you with a person, and He has given you an assignment with a person, God only changes His mind for one of two reasons. Either you choose not to follow the assignment, or you die. Otherwise, God doesn’t change His mind. It’s like that. That’s why Brother Jerry has been with Brother Copeland for fifty-five years, and I’ve been with him for twenty-six years, and I flew a long way because he wanted me there.
I’m about to finish and conclude the presentation or slides to you because the story of the gift is not over yet because there is still some money left over. There was still some money left over. I had this picture taken. The Lord had me continue the theme of what they like most, and they shop at Louis Vuitton. So, I went into Louis Vuitton, and I bought them gift cards. I gave them gift cards, to Brother Jerry, to Miss Carolyn, and we sowed a seed to Joe and Joyce McCroskey. Hallelujah. Glory to God. That’s the end of the slides.
When God puts you together with somebody, and you have an assignment with Him, you can choose. God gives us the ability to choose how far we want to go with God and how far we want to go with the assignment. I often refer to it like a marriage because it’s the way that the Apostle Paul, when he wants to say something that is very significant, he likens it to a marriage. I had to make a decision many years ago, in the first three years of our marriage, at least, maybe even earlier than that. It occurred to me that how much I wanted to have in the marriage was going to be dependent on how vulnerable and how much I was going to open myself to Sharon. The more I was willing to share about myself to her, and the more I was willing to give myself to her. The more I was willing to take what was deep inside of my heart, my fears, my desires, my thoughts, my dreams, the things that were deep in me, the more that I was going to let her in on that, the more powerful and meaningful our relationship would be.
I want to make a distinction for a moment. That is a vulnerability that comes from; we haven’t got money for the end of the month to pay the rent, or we haven’t got money for food, and so that’s a level of vulnerability. You got me? It’s almost a place where you have to; there’s no option, but to talk about it. So, you’re vulnerable, but there’s no option. It’s a vulnerability that’s born out of circumstantial responsibility or circumstantial things that you have no option, but to speak about it. That’s not willingly doing something that’s making yourself vulnerable. That’s a forced vulnerability.
The place where you get the most value out of a marriage or out of a relationship is when you can be vulnerable, and you can open up your heart, and you can trust that person. You have to first trust without signs that they can be trusted, but there’s a loop here because if you married the person, then you should be willing to trust, but that’s not the way people think anymore. The way people think is marriage is just temporary; divorce is always an option. That was never an option for me. When I got married to Sharon, I said the most meaning and the most benefit and the fruitfulness of our relationship is going to be; I have to make myself vulnerable. I can’t expect her to be vulnerable if I won’t be. Okay.
Because many things can go wrong in marriages, but still, you have to take that risk. Right? I have learned that the more you give God a place in your life, the more the risks are minimised because when you do it through God, you take the risk out of the equation. I had lived my whole life for God, and I was ready to risk my marriage in God’s hands. Are you all hearing me? When God spoke to me in 1996, and He said, “I want you to serve Brother Jerry,” when he was here in February of ‘96, and he came to Rhema, and he came to Rhema convention; and He said, “I want you to serve Brother Jerry, ride him around and serve him.” I took leave for a week, and I served him for a week. Then, in 1997, that was early ‘96, the end of ‘96. They had the International Believers Conference, and Pastor Sharon and I were privileged to take care of Kenneth and Gloria and Jerry and Creflo and Jessie and all of those people, and we looked after them for two weeks.
Now, here’s the thing. God spoke to both Brother Jerry and me that we are connected. He called the men and the women that were in the lounge when God put us together to witness this significant covenant that had occurred. He said, he used those words, “There is a covenant relationship between me and John.” That’s very significant, twenty-six years later. I was working in a corporate job where my income was millions of rands every year, literally, and I resigned from that job to go to a job where I wasn’t certain that there was going to be any money. Anything. We never talked about money. We never talked about salaries; we never talked about what I would get. I was just obeying God in what I was supposed to do.
So, that’s 1996, 1997; Brother Jerry ordains Pastor Sharon and I in Fort Worth, Texas. Here we are, all these years later, and we are still together. So, he knows what it takes. He knows what it takes for me to go to America and stay on there, by his request, and then ask me to come back three weeks later. He knows what it takes. He knows what that kind of flying takes out of you. He knows. He’s a seasoned traveller like that. Let me tell you, for all of those days I was on the motorbike. I never had breathing space; not one day did I have breathing space. Morning to night on the bikes, hundred-degree temperatures, morning to night. When you walked out in the mornings to get on the bike, the temperature was already in the seventies and eighties, that would be like twenty-five degrees in the morning, and by the time you were riding on the bike for a bit, it was already thirty-five, thirty-six, thirty-eight degrees. I mean, it’s hot. Brother Jerry had to get off the bike, and it was absolute wisdom for where he’s at this stage of his life. He had to get off the bike and ride in the truck for two or three hours until we got to the hotel because the heat was so intense.
Hello. I couldn’t do that. I didn’t have the luxury of doing that. There wasn’t space for my bike to fit in the vehicle, in the truck. So, I had to ride. I wanted to, you know. I mean, those of you that been around me, you know, I like to push myself a bit and see what I can do, but I was supernaturally energised by God to do all of that because I didn’t skip a beat, not a thing. I know. I know you were praying for me, but it was amazing.
There’s so much that I want to share with you. I had conversations with Brother Jerry. Some of it very personal, some of it very private, that I’ve never had before, that he wanted to engage me with. I had the opportunity to ask him questions that were relative to us as a group of people, and he opened his heart, and he shared a lot of things with me. I believe that Brother Jerry is going to be here sooner rather than later because it’s now my understanding; that you don’t have to be vaccinated to come into South Africa anymore.
When I got to the immigration office, I held out my vaccination form, and I held out my COVID test from the US that I was negative, and she said, “Oh no, I only need one or the other.” I said, “Hold on, Ma’am.” This was nine o’clock at night when I arrived here on Thursday night. I said, “Hold on, ma’am. Are you telling me you don’t need to be vaccinated to come into South Africa?” She said, “If you have a negative test, a negative COVID test, that’s all we need; is a negative COVID test.” “You mean I don’t need a vaccination certificate to come into South Africa?” “If you have a vaccination certificate, Sir, we don’t need a negative test, but if you have no vaccination certificate, all you need is a negative test, and we will let you in.”
Those of you who helped me, you can help me check on whether that’s true, but that’s what she said at the immigration office if that is now the government’s new stance, which I expected to happen anyway because of what’s happened in England. England is completely open now. You don’t need to be vaccinated or have a test. You can just go into England, Great Britain, except for Wales. You still need to be vaccinated for Wales. The Welsh. Anyway, he told me, and he said to me, “John, the minute you tell me that there’s no vaccination required. We’ll start making our plans to come to South Africa.” Hallelujah. Praise Jesus. Hallelujah.
The scripture, 22 For this reason I also have been much hindered from coming to you. 23 But now, this is Romans chapter 15. 23 But now no longer having a place in these parts and having a great desire these many years to come to you, 24 whenever I journey to Spain, I shall come to you. For I hope to see you on my journey, and to be helped on my way there by you, if first I may enjoy your company for a while. (Romans 15:22-24 NKJV) This sounds like an apostle who knows that there are people that are with him. And the people that are with him, he wants to spend time with those people.
Because I asked the Lord, I said, “Lord, why is it that he is calling me?” I want to tell you something, and I’ll finish with this. I’ll tell you something else that happened, is that we were in another restaurant at the end of the tour. We were always either in restaurants or on motorbikes. At the end of the tour in a restaurant and Brother Jerry gets up from the table to go to the bathroom, and as he gets up from the table, he says, “So, John, are you coming on the Texas tour?” So, I look at him like this, and he says, “I’m not really asking. I’m not really asking.” As it turns out, I received a notification they’ve cancelled the Texas tour because of the heat. They considered it to be detrimental to the riders of the bikes because they’re experiencing a heatwave in Texas and in different parts of the USA. Trust me, I know. I know.
I wanted to read that scripture from Romans to you because it became clear to me that when you’re someone who serves God, and you’ve spent your life serving God, you value the people that God has called you to assignment with, and you value the fact that they think like you, they talk like you, they love you, they want what you still have to give, they still honour you. Even though you’re heading towards eighty, they still honour you; they still love you, and they still want something from you because you’ve poured out literally, you’ve poured out your whole life for the body of Christ. And so, what is it to us? If he calls me again, and again and again? Because few are the people that love him like we love him, and so he can’t call all of you? Not yet, but because we have a relationship, he calls me. Hallelujah. Praise Jesus.
It’s been very seldom that I’ve seen Brother Jerry so overwhelmed by an honour seed, and you guys gave beyond what my wildest dreams and imaginations could imagine that you would give. You can see by what we were able to give him that it was not a small seed, that what we took him was indeed worthy of the man, was worthy of a life sown. It’s worthy of many things. Brother Copeland is believing to be hundred and twenty; whether his faith gets him there or not, that’s between him and God. There is a word that God spoke to Brother Copeland; it is not a word that he spoke to Brother Jerry. It is possible that Brother Jerry may go before Brother Copeland; he may just step over into glory.
Who knows when God, who God, or when God requires for a man’s time to be up when his assignment is accomplished on the earth? When you’ve had a long life, and you’ve had a satisfied life because you’ve served God with your life. When you serve God with your life, and we’ve talked about it, you know, Brother Jerry, and I’ve talked about it, he said, “I want to go, when I go, I want to go like Brother Hagin. I want to be sitting at a table with my friends, and then I want to be ordering food, and I want to be able to…,” and it happened to be in his house, his own home, or a friend’s house. I don’t remember the details exactly now, but I believe it was his own home. His friends were visiting him, and he was just ordering more food, and he just put his head down on his chest, and his spirit left his body.
Just like that – with long life, he was satisfied, and his assignment was finished. God said, “Come from your body, and you’ve been in My presence all this time. Now just step into My presence full time.” Who knows when any of us are going to be that way? Who knows when Brother Jerry is going to have that moment? God has given us an opportunity, and we’ve taken it, and I thank God He gave us that opportunity. Brother Jerry, I’m trusting he’ll come, but, you know, if he doesn’t, we have sown seed honourably. We have sown honour seed, and we have sown seed into a legacy of faith that rightfully becomes ours because we pressed for it, and we push for it, and we hunger for it. We’re always seeking God for the legacy. Hallelujah. Praise the Lord. Thank You, Jesus. Thank You, Jesus. Thank You, Lord.
Eternity continues, you know, and forgive me for a moment if I seem to be reminiscing or seem to be a little human in my conversation here, but eternity is what you were born into, and eternity is what you’re going to die into. Eternity is not any theory or thing that doesn’t exist; you are already living in eternity. There is no human being that is alive that is not living in eternity. You just happen to be living in an eternity that your body is now part of. You were born from eternity, which is the eternal God, you were born from Him, and you will be returning hopefully to Him. There are some that, while they’ve had this brief time on the earth, have not made God their Lord and Saviour, so they won’t return to Him.
I can tell you that there are millions of people who have chosen to reject God because they think about God, and in their thinking about God, they choose to say, “That cannot be the way that I have to live my life, because my senses and my thought life tell me that my reality is in my brain and in my feelings,” and if you live by your appetites, by your brain, and by your feelings, you are not living by faith. You are living eternally present now, but eternally present absent from the Lord.
If you die like that, each one of us is going to have a time. Each one of us is going to have a time where we have our, it comes to an end in your body, and then when you step up into eternity, it’s going to be a marvellous thing if you’ve known Jesus. I sense about Brother Jerry, I sense this overwhelming, and I wanted you to get this that it’s hard for me to explain how the favour of God worked while we were on that trip, but everything turned out exactly the way Brother Jerry planned and would have wanted it. Not one of those plans were in place, but God made them all happen perfectly as though it was orchestrated just for him.
Every single place and every time, I literally would get on my bike, and I would speak to the Lord. Sometimes I’d be riding on the highway and the freeways, and the tears would be streaming down my face because I would say to Lord on my bike, “Lord, You’re so great that You would honour a servant of Yours like that, that You would change everything, You would orchestrate people to be – change their own plans, they want to go to Walmart, but they changed their mind, and they came to the workplace to check that everything was neat, and we were there. You orchestrated everything because You favoured the man that gave his whole life to You. That You personally are involved in everything that he’s doing. To the point where my own presence there was to bring him a gift. Something that he desired.” He immediately couldn’t stop talking about it. Everybody in the shop wants to tell them that “Heritage of Faith in South Africa has bought this bike for me. Heritage of Faith in South Africa has bought this bike for me.”
Some people got it confused, and they thought that he had bought this bike for me. So, some of the people came up to me and they came to shake my hand and said, “Congratulations, but how are you going to get it to South Africa?” I said, “What are you talking about?” They said, “No, Brother Jerry bought you the bike.” I said, “No, he didn’t. We bought it for him.” “Oh! Well, congratulations anyway.” [Congregation laughs.] Shows you how words can get turned around in a small group of people in a shop, you know.
But, it was so personal, and I have this sense in my heart, I just have this sense in my heart that Brother Jerry is having these conversations with Jesus about his life now and about the places that he must go and that when he goes there, he’s not just going there because he’s got another ministry appointment, you know. I know that he’s in a place certainly, he’s got less hours to live than when he started, but it’s not even about he wants to make the hours count; it’s his walk with God where he’s saying, “I want to be where You want me to be.”
It was so significant to me that he arranged this tour. People didn’t know what to expect from this tour because it was unlike anything else he had ever arranged before. Every time, they said, “Thank you, Brother Jerry, that you arranged this because we’ve had experiences, and we’ve seen things and heard things that we couldn’t have imagined.”
And again, God began to minister to me, and He said, “See, John, if you walk with Me and I place a desire in your heart, and you and I agree that this desire, that this is the time,” He said, “It doesn’t matter what happens, I will make all things align so that you – and not only that, all those that come and be with you will be blessed by you. The vision and the desire itself carries blessing in it because it’s Me and you cooperating in the desire.”
So, it was his desire to have that Indian. I had no idea. He nearly bought it a week before. Nearly he bought it a week before, and it was sold. He said, “Now I know why,” and he said this to me, “Now I know why it was sold when I went there to go and buy it, John.” He said, “Because I would have bought it a week ago, exactly, I would have bought this motorbike,” and he said, “And I would have missed God because you were destined as Heritage of Faith South Africa, to buy this gift for me.” Hallelujah. God is so personal, and He’s so interested in everything that we do when we give our lives to Him. You can’t beat living flat out, full out for God. You can’t beat it. There is nothing – you just go for it. I want to tell you, just go for it, go for it, go for it.
I have some things that I will share with the young people because I had the opportunity to speak to him and tell him about the young people that have given their lives to God. I asked him very specific questions about them and about what I could minister to them. I will record it on camera so that you all can watch it too, but I’m going to minister it to them because Brother Jerry ministered it to me. I wouldn’t have been in that place if he hadn’t called me. I wouldn’t have been able to ask those questions if we hadn’t had an honour seed for him and because the honour seed opened up doors for conversations that we couldn’t even have imagined that I would have. So, what does it mean that my body gets tired for a couple of weeks when God has eternal values for us? Hallelujah. Praise Jesus. Praise Jesus. Glory to God. Glory to God.
Well, I made it through without crying too much. I got close a couple of times. Pastor Binyam from Ethiopia, you are welcome here. I’m glad you are here with us this morning. Hallelujah. For those of you who were at the graduation ceremony, Pastor Binyam is now Doctor Binyam. He received his doctorate from us. Stand up, Doctor Binyam. [Congregation applauds] I’ve grown to love this man, I’ve grown to love the Ethiopian people and God’s got something planned for us. Hallelujah. Praise Jesus. There’s never a dull moment when you’re serving God. Glory to God. Won’t you stand with me, please? Otherwise, I want to just talk to you the whole day about my experiences.
I will tell you; I did rest yesterday. I’m going back to rest today because my body does need it. So, please excuse me if you find me a little bit needing to catch my breath. Hallelujah.
Won’t you put your hand on your heart and just declare this with me, say, “I’m a son of God. Jesus is my Lord. I want to live my whole life for You, Lord. I ask You to make me aware of my assignment so that I can fully give myself to serving You in my assignment for the rest of my life. I choose to be a vessel of gold and silver – not just wood, but gold and silver. Hallelujah. Thank you, Lord. Thank you, Jesus. Thank you, Jesus.”
It is true; you know, that you can be a Christian and live your whole life believing God as a Christian and when you get to Heaven, you’ll find that all you have left is the fact that you’re saved. Or you can live your life on assignment for God, and you become a vessel that is gold and silver – worthy of the Master’s use. Hallelujah. It’s my heart that all of us would be such vessels. Hallelujah.
I’ve got much more to share with you, but my time is over today. I thank you. I want to tell you that I appreciate all of you much more than you can imagine. I carried you in my heart. Brother Jerry appreciates you more than you know. People can’t stop talking about Heritage of Faith South Africa. Wherever they go, now still he hasn’t, because of COVID all these years he hasn’t been here, he still, wherever they go, people are talking about Heritage of Faith South Africa, about the spirit of honour that we have, about the spirit of our pressing into Jesus and our pressing into the Word of Faith, taking what our generals have taught us as the Word of God, following their example in the faith. They can’t stop talking about us. Hallelujah, and so, for that, I say thank you for loving Jesus. Thank you for pursuing God with us together that way.
May your week be blessed. May the blessing of God rest upon you. May the desire of your heart be towards Him, and may He fill you with all of His goodness. I pray that the peace of God rests upon you, and I pray that no weapon formed against you prospers and that all good things come to you because you love Him and are called according to His purpose. Hallelujah. I bless you in the name of Jesus. Thank you for coming to church. Totsiens.
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