Scripture reference: Genesis 14:13-16, 18-20 MSG; Genesis 15:1-4, 8, 13-18 AMPC; Genesis 17:1-7, 17 MSG; Matthew 10:34-39 NKJV
Praise You Jesus. Praise You Lord. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Praise You Jesus. Praise You Jesus. Praise You Jesus. Hallelujah. Thank You Holy Spirit that we are here because of You today. We pray that everything we hear, everything that is said, everything that is done today will be to Your glory and that it will be received by every person that has come here today. I pray Father that You will guide us and lead us and grow us, in Jesus’ name. Hallelujah, thank You, Lord. Amen. You may be seated.
There is a word that God is brewing in my spirit. When the Lord is ready to allow me to speak it out, I will. Those of you who know me, when I stand in the pulpit and I say; “This is what the Lord says”, then it is because that is what the Lord says. I am very much aware that when I do that, I speak for God and therefore I stand accountable to Him for words that I say. I don’t just speak words. Sometimes the Lord will have an encouraging Word and that is different from when God speaks prophetically. Then you speak for God, that’s a different thing.
There is a gentle breeze of the Holy Spirit that is blowing and I’m speaking to Heritage of Faith people. I know that there are people that are watching via Facebook or YouTube, or other means, but for Heritage of Faith people there is a wind of the Spirit that is beginning to blow; it is a gentle breeze that God is beginning to do things and bring things to us. Just like this music that they are playing in the background, it is not intrusive, it’s comforting, it’s gentle, it’s wonderful. That is the same gentle breeze of the Holy Spirit that is beginning to flow in our ministry.
God is already doing so many supernatural things in this ministry and in our lives in the last while. God is about to do some amazing things. I would just like you to do what you did for me in the first service [Pastor John speaking to the worship team]. Just ramp it up please [instruments playing louder]. [Instruments start playing softer] So when they are playing quietly like this, it’s just a gentle breeze, but when music gets loud, the energy just begins to come at you, right?
When the energy comes at you, it’s like you want to raise your hands, you want to jump up, you want to get with it, right? That’s the best way that I could illustrate to you today, what is happening in the spirit realm with us as a people. There’s a gentle breeze that has been blowing until now, but right now in this season, the Holy Spirit is coming upon us and He is energising us. He is doing things for us that we are not going to be able to help ourselves, we’re going to jump up out of our seats as it were. We’re going to begin to shout, we’re going to take up things, we’re going to be bold, we’re going to be courageous. God is going to do mighty exploits through us. Because of His Holy Spirit, not because of who we are. It’s because of His Holy Spirit; it’s because of Him. Hallelujah. Praise the Lord. Thank you, thank you guys [Pastor John thanks worship team]. Hallelujah. Praise the Lord.
They are just going to disconnect from the things going on here, and I’m going to use this moment just to say that next Saturday morning, we have a Slipstream athletic club celebration and we’re handing out magnets and many other prizes and things. Some people are going to walk, some people are going to run, some people are going to cycle. It’s been an amazing, amazing thing for me that when Brother Jerry said; “In this year there would be supernatural increase and there would be new doors that open.” You know that we’ve been running a sports club for a number of years; four or five years. It’s just been sort of trundling along, not much going on, until lockdown.
In lockdown we did all these virtual challenges and people that were not interested in exercise started walking, started running, started doing all kinds of things. People started getting fit in lockdown. Our club went from having ten or twenty, to having a couple hundred people that are part of the Slipstream Club. We are celebrating on Saturday morning at eight o’clock. If you don’t know where it is, just get on the Slipstream website and you’ll find out. Please come and join us. We’ll give you your boerewors roll, for niks.
No, you’ll have to pay for it and all the profits will go to a foster care home that is working with us for that day; they are going to be working with us. Please come and join us for that morning of fun. Hallelujah. It’s fun to get fit. We have rebranded our Slipstream Club as your Virtual Fitness Friend. Instead of having a BFF, you now can have a VFF [laughter in congregation]. It’s online all the time. Praise the Lord, hallelujah.
I believe there’s some people from Secunda joining us today? Welcome, thank you for visiting. Long way to drive, 100km’s, well you’re welcome, thank you. Well, we have people from Morgenzon that come here like week after week, we don’t thank them or welcome them, but they come here every Sunday [laughter in congregation]. You know these people from Secunda? No? Well they look alright [laughter continues], okay, cool. Praise the Lord.
It’s an amazing thing that when God is in your space and in your life, and He’s working with you and you are having personal encounters with Him; it’s an amazing thing that it changes you forever. You can’t have an encounter with God, you can’t experience God and not be changed by Him. It’s not possible, because God is life Himself. When He comes into your space, into your world, He changes you forever. I’m going to just paint a picture for you for a few minutes if you will just bear with me.
There’s a man by the name of Abram and he’s living in a city that mostly worships the sun god and the moon god. One day he has an encounter with the living God, and this living God says to Abram; “Abram, I want you to leave this city, I want you to leave this place and go to a place that I will show you. I want to be your God, and I want you to be my people.” Up until that moment, he was doing what everybody else did. He served the gods that everybody else was serving and sacrificed to them and did whatever he needed, as being part of that community.
When you, and he, encounters the living God, it changed him forever. He didn’t go and say; “Well, I’ll think about it. Maybe. What will happen?” He just said; “Well, let’s go.” He packed up his camels. It was such a dynamic encounter, that his dad and his parents, family members, his nephew, they all said; “We’re coming with you. If you’ve encountered the living God; we want to come with you.” So he leaves. Just to be a little bit practical, God didn’t give him a Garmin, you know, GPS coordinate to the land and say; “When you get that pin drop there, you’ve arrived. You are nearing your location; you have arrived at your destination.” He didn’t have anything like that.
He just packed up his camels, packed up all his stuff and took them out of the city and waved goodbye to everyone they knew, all the security and everything and they just walked. I imagine Abraham just said; “I think we are just going to head in this direction.” Maybe his dad and maybe some others would say; “Is this the right direction?” “I feel like we got to go in this direction.” You know.
From the beginning, the Holy Spirit has always been hovering over the earth. So when God was speaking words of, “Let there be light” and “let the earth and the water separate”, and the hovering the Holy Spirit, He never left the earth. He’s always been here with His omnipresent presence. He was still here with that same presence so that He could have witness with Abram, in his heart; I’m heading in the right direction.
When he gets there, he finds out there’s famine and that he’s got to move on to Egypt and then he comes back after a long while. You know, many Christians in their walk with God, they kind of have a little bit of a rough time, and then they want to bail on God. But for Abram, when he encountered God, he was going to start a journey. There are a few things I want to say; Whenever you obey God, whenever you obey God, you’re about to experience the marvellous, but you can be guaranteed that there will be a lot of messy, with your marvellous.
When you’re transitioning from the natural man of living, and you’re transitioning into the supernatural living of God, you have messy moments. Relationships get messy, circumstances get messy, your finances can get messy. There are many things that happen that are messy. Be sure that when God calls you, He’s calling you to marvellous. He’s never calling you to stay in a place of being messy. Messy is the human experience coming into alignment with the God assignment. I’m preaching good today already.
We have this tendency as humans, that when people are experiencing messy in their journey to their assignment with God because God’s called them to marvellous, we have this tendency to have an opinion about it. We have a tendency to look at their lives and say; “I’m glad my life is not in that kind of mess” but hold on the story is not over yet. There’s still a marvellous that’s about to be shown. As long as you don’t quit on God in the messy you will see the marvellous. It may take more than one year or two or three; it may take a few. If you stay with God, you will experience the marvellous because there is no way that when God shows up in your life and you obey Him that He keeps your life messy. Hallelujah! Praise Jesus!
That’s the way it was with Abram. You know, he had some messy moments, he arrives, there is a drought, he’s got to go there, and then he’s with his nephew Lot and there’s strive between him and Lot’s herdsmen, and so he says; “Take the best land for yourself” and he sends him and he goes away, and he takes the best land and here he is living and you know, messy stuff; human messy stuff. But that didn’t mean that God’s not in it. Hello?
I almost want to say this. If there’s, if you’re obeying God, and there’s a whole lot of messy stuff going on in your life, you should almost look at it and say; “Well, that’s to be expected.” You know, most people want to immediately start to clean up the mess. But you should actually just say; “Lord, show me the way out of the mess” instead of trying to clean up the mess, because He knows exactly what path to show you and how to get you through the mess to the marvellous. Hallelujah! Praise Jesus!
When he took his nephew Lot with him, I mean, there was a lot of messy stuff that happened just because Lot was with him. So Lot ends up in the city of Sodom and Gomorrah and then there’s these four kings that fight, five kings, there’s this big battle, and eventually, Lot and all of his family and all of these possessions are captured. You know what that means in those days? If you are captured by a king that’s at war with you, that means you become the slaves, and all your possessions become their possessions. So someone who’s in the battle escapes, and comes and gives words to Abram, that these kings have defeated the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah, and that Lot and all of Abram’s family has been taken captive.
10-12…They captured Lot, Abram’s nephew who was living in Sodom at the time, taking everything he owned with them. 13-16A fugitive came and reported to Abram the Hebrew. Verse 15, 15When Abram heard that his nephew had been taken prisoner, he lined up his servants, all of them born in his household—there were 318 of them— these are all men that belonged to Abram, so hold on I’ll get back talking about that in a moment, and chased after the captors all the way to Dan. Abram and his men split into small groups and attacked by night. They chased them as far as Hobah, just north of Damascus. They recovered all the plunder along with nephew Lot and his possessions, including the women and the people (Genesis 14:12-16 MSG).
I just want to make a point to you for a moment; 318 warriors, 318 warriors. That means these warriors most likely all had wives. They probably had children. So at a rough estimate, 1000 people would go wherever Abraham would go. In those days, he is the equivalent of a king. Powerful, rich, wealthy man. I mean, Abraham is not an insignificant person. 17-20After Abram returned from defeating Kedorlaomer and his allied kings, the king of Sodom came out to greet him in the Valley of Shaveh, the King’s Valley. Melchizedek, king of Salem, brought out bread and wine—he was priest of The High God—and blessed him: Blessed be Abram by The High God, Creator of Heaven and Earth. And blessed be The High God, who handed your enemies over to you. Abram gave him a tenth of all the recovered plunder (Genesis 14:17-20 MSG).
So just the point here, tithing has never ever been about a law. Tithing is always about a covenant in your heart and I’ve said this for many years; if you don’t have a covenant in your heart to tithe with God, then you should rather hold on to your money until you have that covenant in your heart to tithe with God. Because when you tithe to a human institution, God receives your tithe in heaven. So you’re not giving in covenant with men, you’re giving in covenant with God. It’s God who blesses you not man. Praise the Lord!
Afterwards, there is all of this plunder that the people want to give to Abraham, and Abraham says; “I’m not wanting to take all of any of the wealth that you give me. All of the men that fought with me, let them take what they share because I won’t have anybody tell me that they have made me wealthy. Because my wealth comes from, from the Most High God.” So he refuses to take any spoils or plunder from that war. But he freed his nephew, and he freed their family so that they could continue to live.
After all of these things have happened. I’m going to chapter 15, verse 1, 1After these things, the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision, saying, Fear not, Abram, I am your Shield, your abundant compensation, and your reward shall be exceedingly great (Genesis 15:1 AMPC). That’s like someone going to Bill Gates, someone of ‘billionaire status’ in our modern-day world, and saying, “Fear not oh billionaire. I am your award, and I’m your abundant compensation, and your award shall be exceedingly great” and the billionaire looks at God and says; “I’m already great.” Come on. It’s not like God was coming to a poor person and a person who had no influence.
I mean, God was speaking to Abram, and he said, I will be your reward, I will be your compensation. And you will become great. You know? If you’re a billionaire, you understand that might include the increase of your wealth, but that’s not really what it’s about surely? 2And Abram said, Lord God, what can You give me, since I am going on [from this world] childless and he who shall be the owner and heir of my house is this [steward] Eliezer of Damascus? (Genesis 15:2 AMPC). In other words, he’s having this conversation with God and he’s saying; “The wealth that I’ve already got, for me, is everything I need. I’m getting to an age where soon I’m going to leave this world, and all of this wealth is for what? I don’t have a child that I can leave this wealth to.” It would be like Bill Gates saying; “I’m getting close to dying. I don’t have a child. I can’t leave my wealth to anybody. So my CEO who’s run the business for the last 20 years is going to get all my wealth.” I mean, that’s exactly this kind of situation. The man who helped me manage my stuff, and get it all to where it was, he’s going to get all the wealth, because when I die, who else is going to take it? So you understand Abram’s having a conversation? Yes, and it’s not about money. It’s about I’ve got this money already. What am I? What’s it for? So why do you want to bless me? What’s the compensation for?
2And Abram said, Lord God, what can You give me, verse 3, 3And Abram continued, Look, You have given me no child, and [a servant] born in my house is my heir. 4And behold, the word of the Lord came to him, saying, This man shall not be your heir, but he who shall come from your own body shall be your heir (Genesis 15:3-4 AMPC). So God takes him outside of the tent and makes him look at the stars, and he looks at the sand, and he said; “That’s what your family is going to look like.” 8But he [Abram] said, Lord God, by what shall I know that I shall inherit it? (Genesis 15:8 AMPC).
Then He tells him to bring a cow and some animals and he begins to tell him to cut them in a certain way, and when darkness comes, there is a fiery thing that happens over those, I don’t want to get into all the detail of that, except what happens to Abram, while he’s in a deep sleep, and he’s having this encounter with God. This is what happens to Abram.
¹³And God said to Abraham, no positively, that your descendants will be strangers dwelling as temporary residents in a land that is not theirs in Egypt, and they will be slaves there and will be afflicted and oppressed for 400 years. 14But I will bring judgment on that nation whom they will serve and afterwards they will come out with great possessions, 15and you shall go to your father’s in peace and you shall be buried in a good old age. 16And in the fourth generation, they your descendants shall come back to Canaan again. For the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full and complete. 17When the sun had gone down in a thick darkness had come on, behold a smoke, smoking oven and flaming torch passed between these pieces. 18On the same day, the Lord made a covenant a promise of pledge with Abraham saying, to your descendants, I’ve given this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river Euphrates (Gen 15:13-18 AMPC).
I am going to just keep going here, verse 17, 1-2When Abram was ninety-nine years old, God showed up and said to him, “I am The Strong God, live entirely before me, live to the hilt! I’ll make a covenant between us and I’ll give you a huge family.” 3-8Overwhelmed, Abram fell flat on his face. Then God said to him, “This is my covenant with you: You’ll be the father of many nations. Your name will no longer be Abram, but Abraham, meaning that ‘I’m making you the father of many nations.’ I’ll make you a father of fathers—I’ll make nations from you, kings will issue from you. I’m establishing my covenant between me and you, a covenant that includes your descendants, a covenant that goes on and on and on, a covenant that commits me to be your God and the God of your descendants… Verse 17, 17Abraham fell flat on his face. And then he laughed, thinking, “Can a hundred-year-old man father a son? And can Sarah, at ninety years, have a baby?” (Genesis 17:1-8, 17 MSG).
Well, I’m about to get the next part of the message and part of the reason why I have these things on the table here. When I did Leadership Academy, when I put Leadership Academy on tape, I’m sure I used this somewhere along there. I can’t take credit for what I’m about to tell you, someone else actually taught me this many years ago and the way it was taught to me was; if you have a day or you have time in your life that you need to allocate time to. First of all, you all know me, that I’m not so fixated on time management, I’m much more focused on energy management. Time is just a measurement of how you manage your energy. So we all got a limited amount of energy every day.
If you consider that your life is made up of big moments in a day and if you take this as a measurement of your day, your day will be filled with big rocks. That pretty much fills up your jar. So you are going to sleep six hours or eight hours, you are going to have some hours dedicated to hygiene, you are going to have some hours dedicated to eating. You may have some hours dedicated to exercise. As you fill up your day, these are the big rocks of your day. You got to work, right? There are big things that fill up your time. I would like to keep this parallel going with your day or a single day, that is also the rest of your life; because when you get to the rest of your life it will be one day at a time.
You never get to the rest of your life suddenly. Sometimes it feels like that, but you get to the rest of your life one day at a time. I also would like you to see that one day of energy and how you use your energy can be a reflection of how God can use your life. I’m wanting to make a parallel, have a parallel conversation with you about strategic moments that happen in your life, that fill your life, like rocks fill your life, they are so big that they take up huge significance in your life.
Before I get to the other stones, I’m going to just speak about this for a minute. I had a big rock moment in my life. I was all of twenty-one years old and I was married to my wife who I have now been married to for almost forty years. When I was twenty-one years old, the Lord showed me how to love my wife. I never went to a psychologist, I never went to a counsellor, I never went to my dad or my mom who had a very bad marriage. I never looked at any other marriages that could because I didn’t see any quite frankly. There wasn’t anybody around me at that time that I thought had a good marriage, that could speak to the kind of marriage I wanted.
I didn’t want to just be married. I wanted to be a man, married, that had a lot of joy, had a lot of peace, had a lot of wonderment and good things happen to me in my marriage. Come on now, who wants to get married to be sad? If you have a choice and most of us should have choices, but there are a lot of communities in the world, you know, in other religions where the people don’t have a choice, but if you have a choice, you should actually want to make a choice to be happy, not to be sad. To have joy and peace and to be satisfied. I had a big rock moment, and that big rock moment was when the Lord told me to love my wife as Christ loves the church and to give myself up for her. That meant that I needed to be very spiritual in the way I loved her and give up things that I wanted to do for myself and serve her.
When all my friends saw me serving her, the way I did, they all told me that I was dominated by her and I had no backbone to live for myself. What they didn’t realize is that I was investing a big rock into my life, that would take up every day a part of my life, significantly, every day. There is not a day that goes by, not a day. Even when we’re apart from each other, if I’m travelling or she’s travelling, whatever, there’s not a day that goes by that we don’t tell each other we love each other, we adore each other, we are grateful that God put us in each other’s lives. It’s not just a habit, it’s a determined application of what God’s Word says we must do. You understand that what God told me then is something I’m still doing. It’s become a big rock in my life. It happens to be applied every day but it’s also a big part of my life. You get the picture?
I had another big rock moment in my life, and I was about twenty-six years old. I was at Bible school and this software company approached me and they made me an offer to become a sales manager, branch manager of the Durban branch. I was living in Joburg. I would become a shareholder of the company if certain targets were met. They were willing to pay for all of our expenses to move us down to Durban, set us up in Durban. I would then run the company in the whole Natal region. That was just at a time when personal computers were really beginning to take off and I mean, everybody understood there was a big market for this, and this was going to be the future. Anybody in the computer business knew this was going to be the future.
When they invited me to be a branch manager/sales manager and a shareholder, any young man at twenty-six years old would have said; “It’s a no brainer. I got to do this.” Very few people get an opportunity and they sold it to me like that. We think you’ve got the right value system; you got the right culture; you work well with us. You work hard, you understand what we’re trying to do. All of that kind of stuff because I was selling computers to them. We had a relationship. It was a very short meeting with my wife and the Lord and I. Very short meeting because we knew that God had called us to that church. I was in Bible school and my life was not about following any and every opportunity that came my way. My life was about being in assignment and alignment with God’s will. It was a big rock moment in my life. I said; “No thank you.”
Many years later they sold their company and the shareholders and owners of the company, that were co-founders as I would have been, at the beginning of that, they made hundreds of millions of Rands. Arguably one could say I would have had hundreds of millions of Rands. You think God, if I followed that, you think when I came to heaven, and I walked into heaven and I said; “God hey, you know what while I was on earth I made a hundred million. So what do You think about that?” “What does that mean to Me? I don’t need a hundred million here.” So, what is He going to say to me? He is going to say; “John, let’s just replay the movie of your life quick-quick. You’ll see it all instantly, in a blink you’ll see your whole life” and He’ll say; “You see this gift that I gave you this calling that I put on you, it was so that you could have done this, and you should have done that. Here’s where I sent an angel. Here’s where I sent the person to speak, here’s where I sent, and actually your assignment with the gifts and callings on your life was to do this. And you come here with your hundred million, and that means nothing to Me. I sent you to earth to do something else. I can’t say good, well done, good and faithful servant because of what you thought was good for you. I have to say, well good, well done good and faithful servant, because you did what I sent you on earth to do.”
I believe that’s the time that the Bible talks of that then there will be a weeping and gnashing and a wailing of teeth because people will see what God had assigned them to do, and then what they actually did, and they’re going to realize before God that; I had all this opportunity for eternity to do these amazing things for God, and I followed my own course. Because I just wanted to do what I wanted to do. Huh, it’s quite something hey?
Well, Abraham’s story is not about wealth. Abraham’s story is about a child that God wanted to birth through him, because Abraham was walking with Him. When Abraham was walking with Him, He wanted Abraham to have a child because He wanted that child to have an assignment on the earth. Can I ask you, why Isaac? Why laughter? Well, mainly because when he laughed, he was like, can this old body have a child when I’ve been trying to have a child since I was young? And can Sarah’s old body have a child since she’s trying to have a child since she was young? So, he laughs thinking, how can this happen?
Well, here’s the good thing about being obedient to God, is that even when you’re still living in the messiness of your natural world, God has already busy redeeming time to restore to you the things that only Godly energy in your life can restore to you, not what your energy and your plans can make happen. What God was already seeing is, “Oh your energy has already been expended to the point where you can’t do something for you. I’m going to give you the energy that you would have had when you were 50, or 60. And your body can do what it did then, so I’m redeeming time by restoring energy that you can’t restore.”
Remember, it’s not about time, it’s about energy. God brings His energy, and when He brings His energy into a situation, He immediately begins to transform everything, and He restores everything that you can’t hope to restore yourself. The big rock moments that you miss God out on, the minute you begin to obey God and put the big rock moments back in order with God, He begins to say; “Thank you for that. Now I can start the redeeming process. Now I can start the restoring.” What do you think He means: “I will restore all that the locusts have eaten.”
Do you know when locus come and eat harvests? They expend much energy to consume what energy has created. A harvest is energy. You don’t get a harvest without the sun, and the rain and the energy of the earth producing a harvest. What energy took a whole long time to produce, another energy force comes to destroy it in moments. God says; “I understand how the enemy that comes with energy to destroy things in your life can look like this can never be restored, but if you just stay with Me and keep giving Me your big moments of your life when I speak, I will restore it.”
Only God can do that. These are big things, there are moments. I’m telling you some of the moments that I had. I had another moment when the Lord spoke to me and he said; “I want you to sell your house in Johannesburg and I want you to move to Witbank. I want you to come and live in Witbank” and I said to the Lord; “This is my family house. This is where I raised my kids. You will have to talk to Sharon.” You know, as much as this is my house, this is actually her house.” Men, you understand how that works? Right? Yeah, it might be your house, and you might pay for it, but actually, it’s her house. You know, just walking there with dirty shoes or something, and you find out whose house it is. Right? Anyway, so, I said to the Lord; “You got to speak to her.”
There she was, I went, and I told her what the Lord said. She was standing in the pantry, and she was washing dishes. As she was washing dishes, the Holy Spirit came upon her. And He said; “I have given this all to you, give it to Me, you will never lack for anything.” Just like that, God took that house, and all of what our family had experienced in that house, just took a right out of her heart and she said; “I’m willing to go wherever you send me.” Just like that. God has been sending us all over the world. Hallelujah. Praise Jesus.
Big moments. When you have a big moment, when you obey God, your life gets filled with big rocks. Your life is not only about big rocks that fill your life. There’s lots of spaces that you can fill with many other things. If you really want to fill those jars, you can take smaller rocks, and you can begin to put these other rocks in your life. These rocks are like, you know, having coffee with your friends, doing some exercise, you know? Maybe it’s going to watch a movie, do some relaxing stuff, whatever you do. Maybe you go skiing on the dam or something, you know? Whatever it is that some people bake cakes, some people cut lawns, you know, plant flowers, they do. Whatever you do with the other things that you do in your life, you will fill it, you begin to fill your life with those things.
It’s important that whatever you fill your life with is surrounded by the important things. Because then whatever you begin to put into your life that is less important, even these things begin to take a shape where they begin to complement the assignment, not work against the assignment. They begin to complement your assignment; they begin to complement what God’s called you to. When you give the big things to God, then even when you have the fun things that you do in the small things that you do, you know, hygiene, many things that keep your life busy.
Then of course, you know, when you’ve got other little moments that actually end up because you really want your jar full, there is lots of spare time, little things that you do. I know some people, they walk into a garage and they take out some tools and they have a motorbike or they have a bicycle or they have a lawnmower, and they start pulling things apart. You know? They just do stuff. I mean, it’s the most amazing thing to me when I say see someone working on, fixing something. I mean, my adopted son Ernest, he lives in Rustenburg. Whenever he has spare time, he would accumulate like TV’s and VCR’s, all those years ago, you know, I would walk into his room and he would have these parts everywhere. I say; “Ernest, what are you doing with all these parts?” He’d say; “I’m learning”, “To do what?” “I’m learning how to fix TV’s and I’m learning how to fix VCR’s” I said; “How do you do this?” He says; “No I’ve learned you take this one, you put it like, you take this wire and you it” I said; “How do you learn this?” he says; “I just think and then put this on and it works.” It amazes me that people can think like that and they can make that work. You understand that Ernest is called to serve. In his serving, what he loves to do with granules of sand is he just loves to work on VCR’s or whatever. Fix a car.
There are many things that fill up your day. There are many things that will fill up your assignment. It is an amazing thing to me that I had a big rock experience that came into my life, and that big rock experience was; this is the word of God coming to me, just me and the Lord speaking to me. He said; “John, you want everything that your spiritual father Jerry Savelle’s got in his ministry?” I said; “I do believe that it would be a good thing.” He said; “Well then why don’t you get it?” I said, “Okay.” He said; “He rides motorbikes, and they’ve got Chariots of Lights.” I said; “Lord, I don’t like motorbikes. It’s not a desire of mine to own a motorbike, or to go “wroom wroom” with a motorbike.” You know, I mean, I know there’s some guys that want to get on a motorbike and rev it as hard as they can and do wheelies. Then they want to go afterwards and want to see if there’s a little speck of oil coming out of the seal and they’ll break the seal open and fix it. It’s not my deal.
You know, the Lord said to me; “If you want it, the blessing of outreach, missions and harvests that comes with his, with his passion, you can have it.” I said; “I believe I will.” As a step of commitment to what God had spoken to my heart, I went and got a motorbike license, and then I went and bought a motorbike. Now I’m going to learn to ride motorbikes. I mean, I could ride motorbikes, I just needed to get used to riding motorbikes. I got my license, the next minute, there’s a tour happening in California and so I feel this is the thing to do. As it turns out, the President of the California Chapter, has damaged his calf, in some kind of incident, so he lets me know he said, “John, if you’re coming to California, and you’re coming to ride this chapter, ride my Harley.”
Little did I know that he’s got this massive groot big touring Harley! I arrived in California, and well, I arrive in Texas, Brother Jerry says; “John, you’re not flying commercial, you’re flying with me in my jet.” I get on brother Jerry’s jet, we fly to California, someone picks us up at the airport and we go to the hotel, and we’re meeting all the people that are Chariots of Light in California. Then Brother Jerry asks Bill and Ginger, “Where is John’s bike?” you know. Where? It’s Joshua’s bike I know, so where is it? So, no it’s parked here. He says; “John, have you ever ridden a Harley?” I said; “No, sir.” He looks at Bill, he says; “Bill, you better teach him how to ride this Harley.” I check into the hotel, I come down and meet Bill. He says; “John, here is the on switch, here is the off switch, here is the flicker, here is the this… come let’s ride.” We ride around the parking lot. “You got it?” I said; “I got it.” What else must I say? You know, 950 pounds of motorbike underneath me here. Next morning, we up early, get on the bike, there we are. Seven lanes of Los Angeles highway, peak hour traffic, and I’m riding a motorbike. All I can say is; “Jesus help me.” Truly, truly.
Most amazing thing happened. That tour began to do things with me in relationships with people that I would never have met. Things happened there that would have never been possible to happen to me. I come back to South Africa, and I’m saying; “Guys, I’m starting Chariots of Light, who wants to join?” It’s like all these propellerheads, mechanic guys, motorbike lovers just pop out from every woodwork everywhere. We want to be part of it. Now it’s one of the most successful things we do in the ministry. It’s like every time we go for a ride on a bike is a new guy with a new bike. God has used it miraculously – this person’s giving a bike to that person, and he’s believing God for a motorbike, and suddenly there’s this giving that’s broken out in the church and there’s miracles that are happening in the church and in Chariots of Light. We go outreach, we go and do things and God has put this all together, and guess what; I love bikes. You see what happened is that God said; “You give me your energy, I will restore things to you that previously you wouldn’t even thought you needed in your life. But if you need it for your assignment, I’ll give you a love for it. If you’ll just obey me, and I’ll do it.” Hallelujah. Praise the Lord.
Isaac was someone that God needed on the earth, because Isaac, he was a representation of restoration of energy. It was the representation of God’s assignment with Abram. It was a representation of God’s encounters with Abraham. It was a representation, Isaac was a representation of not only the things that God could restore from the past, but Isaac was a representation of his energy that had come at any given moment, and restore in a moment what no one else could restore. Isaac was a representation of what God would do somewhere in the future. Abraham had to see it in a 3D picture.
The best way I can describe it to you; is that when he was asleep, and God was showing 400 years of living in Egypt and the slavery that was going to happen and the deliverance, it was almost like we would say, nowadays, if you were in a 3D with 3D goggles on and a 3D, and you happen to be living in a virtual moment; Abraham was living in a virtual moment with God 400 years from where he was at that moment. He saw what his seed would become. God the Father asks Abraham to do two things for Him. One thing is that to seal the covenant, he had to circumcise all the men in his camp. I’d say that’s messy. You have to go through the messy, to get to the marvellous, even though it might be painful, might be difficult, and it might look a bit like everything gets put on hold for a while. You have to go through the messy to get to the marvellous. Hallelujah.
I’m going to read you a passage of scripture in a minute, but I want to just show you that there are some things that God wants you to establish in your life. Without circumcision, there was no covenant that God could have with Abraham. There would be no other son that would come from Abraham. Are you with me? The messy of the obedience was necessary to get to the marvellous. Come on. When he gets to the marvellous, where his son Isaac is born, God asks him to do another thing, and He says; “This son that was born and you laughed about it when I told you”, which is the meaning of the name of Isaac – laughter – “you laughed when I told you that your 100-year-old body and Sarah’s 99-year-old body could actually bear a child. You laughed. So we call him Isaac. I want you to give that son back to Me and I want you to sacrifice him to Me.”
If you think that any child that is born on the earth is just because of a physiological reason, then you are wrong. It doesn’t matter what the circumstances are that brings a human spirit into the earth, it is coming from the presence of God, it is not because of a natural coming together. I say this again; did any of you come here without your body this morning? Huh? Anybody with a body, you all here? Did you come here without your soul? No, you had to bring your soul with you. Anybody come here without your spirit? If any of you have seen anybody that’s dead or seen a dead body, you will understand that their body remains on the earth, but they are not there. They are gone. This soul and spirit are eternal.
If you live your life, with your body dictating what you do, then your eternity will only be what your body and your soul commands you to do. Until your spirit gets born again, then your spirit man will start to speak to you and your spirit, man will begin to speak to you through your soul. Your soul and your spirit can agree, and it can dominate your body. So what happens is your body is merely a vehicle to get an assignment done, that God places in your spirit, that gifts you in your soul so that your body can fulfil His assignment, which is just a very short time. Therefore I say, when I get before God one day, and He wants to know, how did I do on Earth, my hundred million makes nothing. He wants to know; “I gifted you in your soul, and your body was supposed to do something, and your spirit man was supposed to hear and get direction from Me.” Big moments.
Certainly, Abraham has a big moment. Abraham’s big moment is: “Sacrifice your son to Me, one that I prophesied not once or twice, but many times, I prophesied your son into the earth, Abraham. Now, I brought the energy restoration, I redeemed the time, I brought energy to a level of age that you couldn’t even imagine, and I restored the time because of My energy that could restore your body. When I place my energy into your body, it becomes like it couldn’t do before. So you had a child at 100 years old, that same energy has produced an offspring, I want that energy back. I want all of his future back. I want all of his talent back. I want all of his gifts and calling, I want it back. The way I want it back is, I want you to give his future to Me in sacrifice.” That’s quite something. Praise the Lord.
Of course, we know the story. Abraham realizes that none of this could have happened without the mighty God being present in my life. So I know that if He could bring this old body back to life, He can bring Isaac back to life. So the best thing for me to do is to secure my son’s future and to secure those things that I saw in the spirit to secure the future, I must be obedient to God. So he takes him, and he puts him on an altar, and he’s ready to kill him. God says; “No, now I know in your heart, you will do everything for Me. Therefore, everything is secure, eternally.” Hallelujah.
I’d like to read you a remarkable set of scripture, and I want to say this to you; God has birthed a message in my heart, which I haven’t yet had a full liberty to minister but it will come out in time. You might have heard me saying what the difference is between a blood-borne person versus a blood-bought person. Many people think that if you’re blood born into a family that the greatest level of Covenant is a blood-borne family member. God doesn’t think that way. God sees your blood-bought family as more important than your blood-borne family.
I will teach more about that in the future. I don’t want to be leading into it because I want to read you this passage of scripture verse in Matthew chapter 13, verse 32, I think. My eyes here. 34 “Do not think that I came to bring peace on earth. I did not come to bring peace but a sword. 35For I have come to ‘set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law’; 36and ‘a man’s enemies will be those of his own household.’ 37He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me. 38And he who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me. 39He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for My sake will find it (Matthew 13:34-39 NKJV).
I ask you a question today, church. What does Jesus say there? Do you think Jesus says His own mother and brothers were more important to Him than everybody else that He was going to die for? In another passage of scripture; “Who is my mother and father, except he that does the will of My Father in heaven”, which means in Jesus, the blood-bought family is more important than the blood-borne families.
What did He ask of Abraham to do? He says; “Abraham give me your blood-borne family, so that in the future I may take him and use him to purchase for myself a blood-bought family because in Isaac, I will have the rights to bring Jesus in the earth and when Jesus dies in the earth, I will have the right to kill my own Son, so that in His Blood, everyone can be saved for eternity. Everybody that believes in Him, I can fulfil for every one of their assignments, I can fulfil all of what I have wanted in before time began, I can in the blood-bought family, I can make it happen.” Yes, it will be messy, but it will turn out marvellous. You mustn’t look at the messy all the time because the marvellous is coming soon.”
Every one of us in our lives have messy moments. We have moments where we make decisions that sometimes we thought, we wish we had made a different decision, maybe we should have done things differently. Maybe I could have said something. All of us have had messy moments. No? With family members, with people at work, with different kinds of, all of us had moments where it’s been messy. And guess what? In a normal blood-borne family you have messy moments, “Boetie slaan sussie”, “Sussie trek boetie se hare.” Neh? Messy moments. “Pakslae vir dit.” Go sit in your corner, go you know, I’m saying messy moments. It doesn’t make the family less marvellous just because you got some messy moments.
On the contrary, you find out actually those messy moments help you to actually find out who you really are in Christ, and how great God’s grace is and how great His mercy is, and how wonderful the power of the blood is that He can restore messy moments and can make greatness out of your noise and of your nonsense out of your poor decision making. He can reverse the energy cycle and say; “What the locusts have eaten I will restore to your life.” Glory to Jesus.
We have a whole bunch of people, young adults that are joining the ministry to come here for a year next year to encounter God. I couldn’t have told you 10 years ago when I had my first Myexchange event that we started that God would answer the vision this way. But I don’t know, how many people do we have here in the ministry now? 13, is it 13? That is with me in the ministry. Next year, that’s probably going to go to nearly 20 or more. Because young people are coming here for a year to encounter God.
Why? Because many of the children have grown up in this house. They’ve learned faith. They’ve learned what it is to serve God and they’re saying; “Before I go, if God wants me into the Babylonian system, let me secure myself and let me put my identity in the giving my first fruit of my life to God so that the rest will be blessed.” Glory to God. Some of those people might come and never leave. Some may come and leave and go on. God has given me a forum, an understanding of how to make sure that the blood-bought family has the strength that wherever they go in life God’s got them covered. Hallelujah.
You know, Tina and Otto are here, they’re now part of our missions’ team. They do more than that. But they’re part of the missions’ team. They came to me some years ago and they said, we got a job opportunity in Dubai. You know, we feel like this is it. We prayed about it, and so the Lord said to me; “Release them and bless them to go to Dubai, you know. So off they went. I said, “But the Lord, just bless them to go don’t because they must come back.” And I told them, they must come back. They’re not just going to Dubai forever. As much as Dubai is nice.
If it’s not where God wants you forever, then you can’t be there forever. Circumstances happened in the next minute, one December, I got a phone call from Otto, “Pastor John, I think it’s time.” I’m cutting a long story short. “I think it’s time.” I said, “Otto, I think it’s time too, get yourself back here.” I think it was a matter of days, or, hey, it was a matter of days. They packed up, brought themselves back and my what a blessing they’ve been to the ministry. Hallelujah. Because your blood-bought family is where God can make assignments happen.
When you are blood bought, then your assignment can actually minister to your blood-borne. Your blood-borne can never change your destiny and your assignment in your blood bought. Did you get that? Blood borne family will always have lots of things that they will say; “You can do this; you may not do that. We have an opinion of this. I think you should do this, or you shouldn’t do that.” Your blood-borne family will have lots of things to say about your life. But the blood-bought family of God is where your assignment is always going to be fulfilled.
It’s never fulfilled in your blood-borne family. It’s always fulfilled in the blood-bought family. Hallelujah. Praise Jesus. It might be messy. But we’ve got to learn to deal with messy not be afraid of it. Not run away from it. I’ve got my son Garth here that played the piano. He’s got four kids. [Pastor Garth: Praise the Lord], Praise the Lord says a man with four kids, you know. You know when you got four kids you have to learn to deal with messy and it’s like they want to keep visitors away from their home because their home is always messy. We as moms and don’t try and clean up your house. We are okay with messy. We just want to come be with you.
Hello? God doesn’t care about your messy just wants to be with you. And while He’s hanging out with you, pack that away, take that away, clean this up, help you with that feed this baby, do that. Before you know it, your life is in much more order than it was before He visited. Then your messy becomes marvellous. Glory to God, won’t you all stand with me please? Praise Jesus. You get something from this message today? I want to just tell you that there is this, this prophetic word that is building in me and so I’m very careful always when I, I speak for God. I want to tell you that I believe it’s going to give us a direction. It’s going to unloose, unleash, make things happen in the ministry. We are going to be very bold, and we are going to be very courageous, and we’re going to go for big things in God.
In a time where I feel I do, I feel this way I feel like the enemy of God has put a cloak over the church and put a cloak over even governments that are confused and nobody really knows what to do next. God has got a light in the church and we have to do and be things in the church that the world can’t be. God is ready to speak out what He wants the church to do so that he can make sure the church is mighty and powerful and strong in the earth. Hallelujah. Glory to God.
Put your hand on your heart, say; I am a son of God and I will hear, and I will be obedient, and I will do what you tell me to do. Thank You, Lord, that I am Your child. Every day, I look for big moments and small moments where You will be present to help me in Jesus’ name. Hallelujah.
I pray that the peace of God rests upon you. No weapon formed against you will prosper. I declare that your footsteps are ordered by the Lord and that you won’t go this way to the left or that way to the right but you will follow in the path that He has got for you.
I pray that the prosperity and increase come upon you. This is a year of supernatural increase as prophetically spoken by Brother Jerry, and that new doors will open for you. No weapon formed against you prospers or against your assignment, or against anything that God has for you. In Jesus’ name.
Do you agree with it? Say amen. Thank you for coming to church. God bless you.
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