Scripture reference: Matthew 18:1-4 KJV, Colossians 1:12-14 KJV, Colossians 1:13 AMPC, Galatians 1:4 NLT, Galatians 1:4 CJB, John 3:16-17 AMPC, 1 John 2:15 AMPC, 1 John 2:15-17 TPT, Galatians 5:16-24 AMPC
Oh, praise the Lord. Glory to God. You see, that is how you rejoice. That’s how you rejoice. I mean, I do it in my car, I do it in my car, I do it in my bathroom, I do it when I’m walking around my house, I do it in my prayer room, on my prayer chair, you know, I do it. Because I know that the joy of the Lord is my strength. The joy of the Lord is my strength. Glory to God. Hallelujah.
Well, a great God, a great God and a good God. This is part of my series that, I know I was busy with something else, but the Lord laid it on my heart to begin to start the series and I started in Johannesburg. When Pastor John was listening to my messages, he was listening and listening and listening to these messages and he said, “Start to bring this to Witbank as well.” He said, “I know it will come out differently when you bring it, because the two churches are very different, they are in different cities, they have different things to contend with, they have different… It is just like that, even though Pastor John, who is in our Johannesburg church this morning, even though he brings a message that’s the same there as here, it doesn’t come out the same way because we do earnestly desire to be led by the Holy Spirit while we are ministering.
I must really just say it’s wonderful to have you, Sarah and Wynand and Eli. Little Eli with us, ahhhh, really, really, thank you for coming and blessing us today, being here with us. Praise the Lord. Their first born and we already love him and don’t leave anytime soon.
So, God is a great God, He’s a good God and this series is called, I Will Take the Children. When I give you these scriptures today, you will see what God means by saying, “I will take the children,” because one of our key verses that I have been ministering to you, is Matthew 18. Right? Mathew 18, unless you become some people, some disciples were asking Jesus, Matthew 18, 2 to 4 and I will read it from King James this morning, verse 1, if we can go to verse 1, 1 …Who is the greatest in the kingdom? Okay, obviously talking about the Kingdom of God, so bringing the worldly ways of thinking into the Kingdom ways of thinking. So, who’s going to be the greatest? In the Kingdom of God you know, who’s the smartest, who’s got the best this, who got the highest marks? All of that we get from the world-system. It doesn’t work like that in God’s Kingdom. Right.
Jesus answers them by doing this; 2And Jesus called a little child unto him, and set him in the midst of them, so this wasn’t a baby, this was a little child, that could walk, set him in the midst of them, 3And said, Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, now that word in the Amplified Bible says, unless you be changed, unless you change. You change inside, unless you be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. Now if you’re born again, and Jesus is your Lord, you’ve already been translated into the Kingdom of God. Allright? You’re already there, but that doesn’t mean you’re entering. Because you enter something means I’m going into this place. Jesus is saying, “You can’t come into this place of the Kingdom of God, except you become like a little child,” and He’s not talking here about childishness. He’s talking about childlikeness, where the child trusts, the child listens, the child is believing what is being said. The child is made to be receiving instruction and discipline. All of the wonderful childlike qualities; to learn, to want to learn and to want to hear, beautiful. 4Whosoever therefore shall humble himself, verse 4 says, as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 18:1-4 KJV)
4Whosoever therefore shall humble himself. That was a word that was used of Jesus and it says, “And Jesus humbled Himself,” so there’s a quality of childlikeness that’s in Jesus. It says, He humbled Himself and was utterly obedient. So obedience to His Word, obedience to His ways. Okay? Now, I’m reading this scripture to you to show you in Colossians 1 verses 12 to 14, King James, 12Giving thanks unto the Father, which hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light: 13Who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, I want you to see that you have been delivered from the power of darkness. You may not have received your deliverance from the power of darkness, but you have been delivered from any and every darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son. (Colossians 1:12-14 KJV) When you got born again you got translated from the kingdom of darkness, from the power of darkness into the kingdom of His dear Son. Now, the way you get free is to enter in like a little child. See that?
So, look at what the Amplified Bible says of verse 13, 13[The Father] has delivered and drawn us to Himself out of the control and the dominion of darkness and has transferred us into the kingdom of the Son of His love. (Colossians 1:13 AMPC) You have to see that there is a kingdom of darkness and there is a kingdom of His Son. Right? The Bible calls the kingdom of darkness, we can call it Egypt, we can call it Babylon, the Bible calls it that, you can call it the world-system.
It says in Galatians 1:4 in the New Living Translation, 4Jesus gave his life for our sins, sins are twisted ways. Ways in which you walk in life that are not God’s ways. So, 4Jesus gave His life for our sins, just as God our Father planned, in order to rescue us from this evil world in which we live. (Galatians 1:4 NTL) Can you see that God says that the world in which you live is evil? The world in which you live is evil. Now look at what the Christian Jewish Bible says with this verse; 4who gave himself for our sins, so that he might deliver us from the present evil world-system, (Galatians 1:4 CJB) Right, interesting. You need to think about that. The present world is evil and it’s wicked.
So, here’s John 3:16 and 17 from the Amplified. Now, how does God feel about the world, the people in the world. He does not love the world-system because Satan is the god of this world. 2 Corinthians 4:4, the scripture says, Satan is the god of this world. 16For God so greatly loved and dearly prized the world that He [even] gave up His only begotten (unique) Son, so that whoever believes in (trusts in, clings to, relies on) Him shall not perish (come to destruction, be lost) but have eternal (everlasting) life. Look at verse 17; 17For God did not send the Son into the world in order to judge (to reject, to condemn, to pass sentence on) the world, which means the people in the world, but that the world might find salvation and be made safe and sound through Him. (John 3:16-17 AMPC)
When we follow the prince of the power of the air, when we follow Satan who is the god of this world, it leads to destruction because even though he’s got trappings and trimmings and false glamour and glitter in the world-system, it’s to bait you to get you to kill you. He’s the thief, he’s a liar, he’s a murderer, and he comes to steal, kill and destroy and that is what the Bible says about him, who is the god of this world-system.
So then in 1 John 2 verse 15 the Amplified Bible says, 15Do not love or cherish the world or the things that are in the world. (1John 2:15 AMPC) But John 3:16 says God so loved the world. No, God so loved the people in the world. Like I said earlier on; there’s nothing in the world-system because there is the kingdom of God and there is the world-system. We’ve been translated out of this darkness into the kingdom of His Son. There is nothing about the world-system that God looks at and goes, “Oh, you so smart there I wish I’d thought of that.” There is nothing in the world-system; in the financial, in the health, in the education, anything that the world-system has set up, there’s nothing there that has got God’s smarts in it. God did not create it.
Now you’re in the world but God will help you to live in the world to not be of it. Right? That’s where you walk with Him in your heart, where He helps you to not be of it. So He says here; 15 Do not love or cherish the world or the things that are in the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in him. (1 John 2:15 AMPC)
Look at the Passion Translation 1 John 2:15 to 17, 15Don’t set the affections of your heart on this world or in loving the things of the world. The love of the Father and the love of the world are incompatible. 16For all that the world can offer us—the gratification of our flesh, (1 John 2:15-17 TPT) what is your flesh? It is your carnal nature, that part of you that is carnal and it’s without God; that wants to do what it wants to do. I want to say what I want to say, I want to do what I want to do and that is your willful, carnal, fleshly nature. And let me show you what kind of things it wants to do.
Alright, I’m going to go to Galatians chapter 5, in the Amplified Bible, to show you what your flesh and my flesh wants to do. It wants to do what it wants to do and that’s what Jesus came to deliver us from, remember? We have victory over all of our flesh when we are spiritual and we move into His Kingdom and we move into His Word and we’re like a little child and we’re learning and we’re trusting and we’re hearing and we’re obeying and we’re believing and we’re hearing and trusting and we’re believing and we’re obeying and we’re entering into the Kingdom, deeper into the Kingdom, seeking first His Kingdom and His ways of being and doing right and all other things been added to us all the time. Right?
But your flesh doesn’t want to live like that. Your flesh doesn’t want to have conversations with God. Your flesh does not want the Holy Spirit to put His finger on anything in your life that you love. Your flesh doesn’t want that. Leave that alone; I love that, I like to do that. So many times God’s people don’t want to come and know Him and have deep fellowship with Him in case He might do that, because they’re already chosen, “I love that and just leave me because I know when I die I’m going to heaven.”
So, it says here in the Amplified Bible verse 16, let’s go to verse 16 in Galatians 5. 16I say, this is what the Spirit of God says to us, walk and live [habitually] in the [Holy] Spirit, or with the Holy Spirit, [responsive to and controlled and guided by the Spirit]; then you will certainly not gratify the cravings and desires of the flesh What is that? Your (human nature without God). 17 For the desires of the flesh are opposed to the [Holy] Spirit, and the [desires of the] Spirit are opposed to the flesh (godless human nature); for these are antagonistic to each other [continually withstanding and in conflict with each other], so that you are not free but are prevented from doing what you desire to do. 18But if you are guided (led) by the [Holy] Spirit, you are not subject to the law. (Galatians 5:16-18 AMPC)
You see why you have to. You have no choice, if you want to grow, to have fellowship with the Holy Spirit who lives inside you. You don’t have fellowship with the Holy Spirit through the Word of God when you’re reading the Word of God, through the messages when you’re coming on a Sunday, through developing holy conversations with Him and wanting to know Him and wanting Him to do His work in you, you’re not going to grow.
You’re not going to grow in a different way to what I have to grow. There’s no special way that I mature spiritually that you don’t know about. I’m mature and I grow spiritually because I come to Him. I take time to come to Him, to go, just sit like a little child coming to his Father saying, “Lord, Lord, I believe what Your Word says, Your Holy Spirit lives in me and I’m coming to talk to You.” And I may not feel anything, that means nothing to me – I believe God’s Word. The feelings will begin to follow because you will begin to have the stirrings of the Holy Spirit inside you. He’ll work with you, but you have to get to know Him and how He moves in you and talks to you when you’re reading His Word. Oh, this is You, yes. Jy moet daai verhouding met Hom aanknoop (You must develop that relationship with Him). You have to if you’re going to grow.
You have to develop that relationship with the Holy Spirit, that’s why He lives inside you, it’s what He’s there for inside you. Imagine; He lives inside you all your life and you never ever develop that relationship with Him that the Bible says you should and could and can, that He longs for. You see, your boldness to develop that kind of relationship doesn’t depend on your performance of how good or bad you’ve been. You go to the Holy Spirit through the Blood, on the basis of the blood that Jesus shed for you that makes you worthy to have that rich conversation and communion with Him. Rich, it can be so rich.
He loves you. The Holy Spirit, who lives in you, loves you. How can you say that? Because He’s God the Spirit. God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. Who is part of the Triune Godhead that lives in you? The Holy Spirit. Jesus told His disciples in the book of John 14; I must go away, because if I go away, you don’t understand who’s coming. The Holy Spirit is coming to live in you and it says He’s coming to be in close fellowship with you and He’s going to declare and disclose and transmit and reveal things to you, He’s going to bring correction to you, He’s going to bring discipline to you, He’s going to convict you, He’s going to convince you, He’s going to lead you, He’s going to love you, He’s going to be like Me.
That’s what Jesus said to the disciples; I’m going to send you another One, another Comforter because I’ve been with you for three and a half years and I’ve been your Comforter and I’ve been the One that’s loved you and encouraged you and ministered to you and you’ve gotten to know the Father through Me but I’m going to send you another One, like Me. The Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are One. They’re all God; God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit – three in one. Glory to God.
And the One now, that lives on the day of Pentecost, He came. Jesus asked the Father to send the Holy Spirit. He’s the One that moved in you to be born again, He’s the One, He is that One, and you can develop that relationship. He’s like; come, come, come, come, come. You were born again for this, you were born for this to have this relationship with Me. You were born for it, you were born for it. Come, come.
That’s why I am so, I’m so… He’s given us so much when He gave us the Holy Spirit. You got the Holy Spirit living in you when you got born again but then there’s the subsequent infilling of the Holy Spirit where He gives you your heavenly language. If you believe what the Bible says about that and so often my mind is going all over the place and I really want to talk to Him and I really want to move but my mind is going and my emotions are going and then I can come to Him and I can go, Oh Lord, and my spirit can speak; [Pastor Sharon speaking in tongues]. You see, that’s my spirit.
1 Corinthians 14 says he that speaks in an unknown tongue doesn’t speak to man, he speaks to God. In the spirit he speaks. It says your spirit speaks, your spirit speaks to God, your spirit speaks to the Father. So many times I can’t even speak in my natural language because there is stuff and there is this and there’s that and I might have been at a place where I’m coming so down on myself about things and I’m not going to allow that to affect my relationship with God. So I come to Him with my heavenly language. Sometimes I come to Him with a song, put on a song, I come to Him. But He’s given us so many things to come to Him with, sometimes I open a Psalm in the Bible. You know what I mean? There’s so many things, ways we’ve got to develop this relationship with the Holy Spirit. Learn to be led by the Holy Spirit. You can, you can. You can have a working relationship with Him, He’s your heavenly Holy Helper. Glory to God. He wants to help you.
The desires of the flesh, look at what your flesh wants to do; 19 they are immorality, your flesh wants to be immoral, like people in the world, they want to sleep around, they want to, you know, they want to be immoral. They want to do things that they shouldn’t be doing, you know better because those things in the end will hurt you. 19…immorality, impurity, indecency, 20Idolatry, sorcery, enmity, where you want to fight with people, strife, you want to argue, jealousy, you want what others have, anger (ill temper), you just want to be angry and just have your say, selfishness, and look at verse 21. 21Envy, drunkenness, I just like to get drunk, that’s your flesh, party, carousing, and the like.
But the fruit, verse 22, 22But the fruit of the [Holy] Spirit [the work which His presence within accomplishes] is love, joy (gladness), peace, patience (an even temper, forbearance), kindness, goodness (benevolence), faithfulness, 23Gentleness (meekness, humility), self-control (self-restraint, continence). Against such things there is no law [that can bring a charge]. 24And those who belong to Christ Jesus (the Messiah) have crucified the flesh (the godless human nature) with its passions and appetites and desires. (Galatians 5:19-23 AMPC) Isn’t that beautiful?
So, that’s something that you develop to walk in. You don’t walk perfectly in that but that’s something that you must desire to want to walk in and to push into your relationship with the Holy Spirit so that He can help you. I don’t want to love these things of the world, Lord. I don’t want to love them. I don’t want to love it. Because here’s the Passion Translation again, in 1 John 2:15-17 and then I’m going to finish off with this; 15Don’t set the affections of your heart on this world or in loving the things of the world. The love of the Father and the love of the world are incompatible. 16For all that the world can offer us—the gratification of our flesh, the allurement of the things of the world, and the obsession with status and importance, see what the world does to you? Makes you obsessed with status and importance so that you compare yourself with other people and you live in the torment of comparison to other people. It’s a torment and then you slander other people and you talk about them and you bring them down and then you continue to live because you live the torment of comparison, you talk about other people, you slander and that keeps you in your own comparison trap. See? Look at this; …obsession with status and importance—none of these things come from the Father but from the world. Oh I thank You, Lord. 17This world and its desires are in the process of passing away, but those who love to do the will of God live forever. (1 John 2:15-17 TPT) Glory to God. Isn’t that beautiful?
So, you just let these scriptures minister to your heart. Okay? That’s what you must do. You must never allow Satan to condemn you while you’re reading scripture. He likes to do that. The Holy Spirit wants to enlighten you and set you free through scripture but the devil knows when you read your Bible. “Oh, she’s going to read that and if she gets that from the Spirit of God, she’s going to be free.” So, he’ll come to your mind with condemnation, make you feel so guilty and so bad because you see this beautiful life you can live and he’ll tell you, “You can’t, you can’t, you can’t.” But actually you can.
So, beware of that. That came out of my spirit now, I’ve never ever said this before. When you are reading scripture for yourself, beware of the enemy that wants to come from without to tell you, “You see, how bad you are. You’re none of these things. You do all of these things.” When actually what you should be doing is pressing into the scriptures so that the Holy Spirit can help you. Because He does a completely different thing in you while you’re reading scriptures to what the enemy wants to do. The Holy Spirit works from within, in your heart, to help you overcome. The enemy comes from without. Condemn, condemn, accuse, accuse. Watch out for that.
Now, we’re going to have a beautiful song and Pastor Garth is going to come and sing it and the Holy Spirit gave it. The Holy Spirit gave this song because do you remember Pastor John prophesied and said that the sounds and the songs of Heritage of Faith, he prophesied and said, “They will permeate and they will penetrate us and they will cause our hard hearts to become soft. They will bring us to Jesus.” I’m speaking to born-again Christians that need to be brought closer to Jesus, right? And if Jesus is not your Lord, you can come and speak to us afterwards, you can come speak to myself or to Pastor Garth or to Pastor Christi and we will lead you to Jesus. But today, I’m speaking to born-again believers that Jesus wants you coming closer to Him. He wants you to choose Him. He wants you to not love the world and the things that are in the world. Hallelujah.
So, all of the words of this song that the Holy Spirit gave, are from scripture. I haven’t gotten to all the scriptures yet but I will. And here we go, let the song minister to you, it’s not a song for you to sing, you can see the words or you can close your eyes but it’s the anointing that’s going to work in you as you listen. Thank you, Pastor Garth.
[Pastor Garth sings: I Choose to Love Him]
Hallelujah. Hallelujah. So do that today; choose Jesus today. When you wake up tomorrow morning, choose Jesus for the day and Tuesday morning, choose Him all day and Wednesday, choose Jesus. You know you want to, so then do. Just choose Him. Hallelujah.
I pray for you that this will be a day, today, for you where you will hear these words and these sounds rolling around in your spirit; I choose to love Him. You’ll just hear those words and you’ll say; I choose to love Him, I choose to love Him. Even if that’s all you remember about this song.
When the Lord first gave, just that, that’s what He gave first was; I choose to love Him and then that melody. I choose to love Him. I choose to love Him. That was the first. I choose to love Him. I choose to love Him. We didn’t have the rest of the song, just that; I choose to love Him. Can you hear how that will resound in you this week? I choose to love Him. Let it resound in you. Allow the Holy Spirit to bring it up in you. I choose to love Him. Hallelujah.
We’ll be singing this song, Pastor Garth will be singing this song as I bring these messages to you and then we will just marinate, we’ll just marinate, we’ll just let it bring us to a purity, bring us away from loving the world, bring us out of Babylon, bring us out of Egypt, because that’s God’s best way to do it; is to woo us out, love us out. Come, come, come.
So, may you have a week of love like this with Jesus. I bless you. I bless you. I give you today, I commend you to this word, these scriptures that I read and to this song that is going to resound in you this whole week. Pastor John and I love you, but nothing like Jesus loves you – nothing. There’s no love like His. Phew… Who wants to go home? Not me. You must train yourself, when you leave and you’ve been in this atmosphere, just to guard it and carry it with you and not let it just go out with some casual joke that you’ll talk, you know, but just that we can walk out of a service like this as a people and I can look at you and know you’ve been in the same place as me; you want to love Him like I do, you want to choose Him like me. I bless you in that and you bless me in that.
So I say to all of you, my brothers and my sisters, choose Jesus. Choose Jesus. I’ll be choosing Him with you. Have a wonderful day, whatever you’ll be doing, have a wonderful, marvelous day. May the Word and the blood of Jesus protect you, surround you and especially the sound in your heart; that you’ll hear it even though there may be no instruments, you’ll just hear it. Glory to God.
We should have a table around here and we can just banquet. We’ll eat and have Sunday lunch and we’ll just say, “Play, Pastor Garth.” Just keep playing and we’ll just sit and eat and smile. Isn’t that wonderful? This is what His presence is; what we’re all experiencing here now, it’s His presence. And you can have that and develop that between you and Him in a day, in a very ordinary day, that seems so ordinary and you just reach on the inside of you, your spirit, you reach to the Holy Spirit. Because when you touch the Holy Spirit, God the Spirit, you touch the Father and Jesus. Hmm-mmm. I choose to love Him.
[Pastor Garth sings]
There’s no way to end a gathering and an assembling of the saints like this, there’s no way to end it, but to just say; God bless you. Go into your bright week with Jesus. Bye-bye everybody.
© 2023 – Heritage of Faith Ministries International
TOUCH | TEACH | TRAIN | TRANSFER
