Scripture reference: Colossians 1:13-15 (KJV); 1 Peter 1:19-21 (NKJV); 2 Peter 2:1-3 (NKJV); 2 Peter 2:11-15 (NKJV); 2 Peter 2:4-10, (NKJV); 2 Peter 2:16-19 (NKJV).
Pastor Sharon:
Father, we pray right now for Pastor John as he comes with his vessel to bring a message from Your heart, from the very throne of God. Father, this morning we do not receive this as the words of mere man, but we receive it as it truly is; as the words, Your words, Father. That as we believe them and as we receive them, Father, that they will exercise their superhuman power in our hearts, Lord. Part of our readiness, Lord, our preparation for Your glory, Lord. Hallelujah. So, we thank You that he speaks this morning as the oracles of God, You give him utterance by the Spirit and his words are not specious words of man’s wisdom but they are in demonstration of the Spirit and of power so that Your faith of Your people might not rest in him, but rest in Your power, Father, hallelujah, as they receive into their very spirits by the Holy Spirit the engrafted Word of God this morning. As we sit, we receive Your Word into our very spirits, Father, in Jesus’ name.
Thank you for Your anointing, Your anointing, Father, the anointing that’s on Your Word, Lord, that breaks every yoke of bondage in our lives, Lord. Your Word is like fire this morning for us, it burns up everything in us that cannot stand the test. Your Word is like water that washes us, this morning, clean. Your Word is the sharp two-edged Sword that divides between our soul and our spirit this morning, Father. Hallelujah. Your Word, Your Word says that Your Word is like a hammer that breaks up in pieces the rocks of most stubborn resistance in us, Father. We receive Your Word like that into our hearts. Let Your multifunctional, multifaceted power of Your Word do its work in us completely and that’s what we say this morning and that’s what we receive from Pastor John in the name of Jesus. Hallelujah. Glory to God.
Pastor John:
Glory to Jesus. Thank you, everybody, thank you. Hallelujah. Praise the Lord. God is good. Hey? God is good. Praise Jesus. Praise Jesus. Glory to God. Welcome to church today. Praise the Lord. Wasn’t that really wonderful, hey? I celebrate sound and song. I believe, I do believe this with all my heart, that we are receiving sounds from Heaven so that we can make them on earth. We are receiving words from Heaven so that we can sing them on earth. We are designed to hear them and sing them from earth so that they may go back to Heaven as God has given them to us. Hallelujah. Praise the Lord. You may be seated.
Glory to God. Thank you for being in church this morning. I know that this is the best place for you, this is the only place you really want to be because if you wanted to be somewhere else, you would be somewhere else. But the fact that you are here means you wanted to be here. So, welcome to church this morning. Hallelujah.
Well, last time I spoke to you, I said to you I’m going to be talking about some matters which I’ll approach quite gently. I will. I’m talking about journey from ancient paths to new discoveries. I asked you to bear with me, the other day, last week when I said I’m not trying to talk down to you when I said everything is everything and nothing is nothing and in between everything and nothing is something. What I ended up showing you was that if you give your everything to Jesus, if you give your everything to the Lord, then you will receive everything from Him. If you give nothing to Jesus and you give nothing to God, then there is nothing for Him to work with that He can put back into your life, He can only draw you to a better decision.
So, most Christians live between nothing and everything and they kind of have this idea that they can keep one foot in the kingdom of God and one foot in the system that they live in – the world. And they think when they need something they can go and ask God for something and that God will just deliver, but that’s not the way God works. So, we need to be more focused and we need to be more serious about our decision-making as to where we want to live; if we want to live in nothing or in everything. The living in between is really confusing. It’s the reason why the Church is so confused.
There’s a reason why so many Christians are confused because they look at other Christian’s lives and they say, “Well, if that’s the way Christians live, then I don’t want to live that life.” That’s because those Christians are not living in the everything, they’re also not living with nothing. They live in between something and that something is always going to be nothing to someone else who doesn’t see where you’re living. They see it as nothing. It’s time for Christians to step up and live all out for God. The world is waiting for it, the Church is waiting for it, Jesus is waiting for it; for us to step up and give everything.
I also said Jesus came to fulfil the law, not to preach it. Jesus came to preach the kingdom of God. Jesus came as a fulfilment of promise so we can be free from performance. The only thing that the world system has to offer is performance, because the devil, the enemy of God, doesn’t have any power. The only power that he has is deception and influence, manipulation, deception and influence to get you to use your will to do what he wants. So, because he has no power, he has to create performance so that performance can create some form of energy to create more power, which is an artificial power because it’s only human power, it’s not God-power. But it’s the only power the enemy of God has; it’s to get the power that comes from men through performance. That’s why the world can only focus on performance. They can’t focus on power because they don’t have any. Even political power can be taken away from people unless they perform. Athletes, if they don’t have performance, then they don’t have any power with the people that would sponsor them. They lose their entitlement if they don’t have performance.
So, performance is the only thing that the world has got to offer and so then there’s a hierarchy of performance and so performance then becomes he who performs better gets the best deals, gets the best money, gets the best opportunities – it’s performance-based. God has never wanted the Church to be performance-based, He wants the Church to be power-based. The power of the Word of God, the power of the Holy Spirit, the power that is fundamentally in God, the power that is in the Church that comes together in unity and in love. God is wanting us to show off Him with His power, not with our great performance. I’m already preaching so good this morning that if I stop right now, all you’d have to do is listen to this and go home and you don’t have to think about anything more because this will answer all your questions as to why the world is so performance oriented and why the Church is so power oriented. And we need to be power-oriented, not performance-oriented. Hallelujah.
So when you bring your gifts to the Church, then we as the Church need to be receiving your gifts to release the power of your gift, not the performance of your gift. Because if we release the power of your gift then we all can flow with that power. If we release performance that comes from your gift, then we release more humanity into the Church, not the glory of God into the Church. You can say amen to that. It is the truth whether you know it or don’t know it, or like it or don’t like it – it’s the truth. In Him we know the truth and live in power. Now we live and we have a promise, rather than performance. Because if we want to live in performance, there is no promise with performance. There is only a carrot of the potential of reward. But God says, “I don’t want you to live with the potential of reward. I want you to live in the promise, you must live in the promise of God’s power.” His power delivers on His promise. His promise activates His power.
In what stage of your life do you think performance has got anything to do with your walk with God? In fact, the very thing that you are, you may feel within your conscience and you may feel within yourself that what you want to keep doing is to do better. So if you are driven to do better, it means that there is a level of performance in you that wants to do better for God so that you think that the “doing better” will attract more of God. But God is actually saying your better has got nothing to do with it. All that you have to do is live in the promise. Live in the power that gives you the promise and the promise gives you the power.
Everything I’m teaching you here today you can take any of these principles and apply them to work, you can apply them to relationships, you can apply them to any form of life, any area of life you can apply them to. And you watch and see how it’s almost unthinkable to live life without performance. Why? Why is it almost unthinkable to live life without performance? Because the prince of the power of this air, the prince of darkness, he has created institutions to enforce performance. So the institutions are what drives our lives and so the institutions demand performance. So, if you want to be institutionalised, you have to perform. It is why many people get institutionalised, mentally, because performance is what drains them of all of their life and so they go over the edge, and they don’t know what to do, they lose all hope and so they get institutionalised. Isn’t it sad that it’s called that? Because the very institutions that want you to perform actually end up sending you into the institution because you didn’t perform. I’m still preaching good.
We live in power, not personality. Why is it that we live in power, not personality? Because personalities inevitably are performance-oriented. So personalities are wanting to express themselves in ways that they, the persona, the personalities are wanting to run the show. So we exchange our lives for purpose and not for popular culture, which is what I spent a lot of time speaking last week. We exchange our lives for purpose not popular culture. And I can’t go back to everything that I’ve ministered last week, but we have to withstand the popular culture syndrome, right, that’s happening now. The big, big push, there is a big push in the spirit realm right now that are using natural men, natural governments around the world, there is a big, big push in the world that is trying to get people to have a popular culture that is even more devastatingly either dictated to or they have such freedom of expression that you can become anything that you like.
And so I read to you from the book of Colossians 1 verse 13, 14, and 15, 13 He hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the Kingdom of His dear Son. 14 In whom we have redemption, through His blood, even the forgiveness of sins. There is nothing more you can do to get forgiveness of your sins, none of your performance can forgive you. You only have to live in His power that overcame sin and death and receive His power and live in the promise, not the performance. 15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature (Colossians 1:13-15 KJV).
We are new creatures in Christ Jesus and He is the firstborn. I said to you that that word darkness from the Greek base is the first general translation is shadiness or obscurity. I also said to you that obviously, the most scientific term of darkness is the absence of light. So, but in this case, there is no light because there is been an obscurity, because the light will always shine. The Bible says about Jesus, that there is no shadow of turning in Him, there is no shadow because He is full of light everywhere. So there is no obscurity coming from God to us as light, there’s something that comes in between the light and that whatever that is, that comes in between the light obscures us, obscures the light from us, wherever there’s light shining from us to someone else, something that comes in between that light obscures the light.
So, what it does is it causes the interception of light, an image caused by an object and representing the form of that object, a sketch an outline that comes in between the light. So if we look at the most common term that is being used, today in the world, it is; be whatever you want to be, become whatever you want to become. And whatever you want to identify as, you can identify as anything you like. This is not something new, this has been going on for a long, long time. It’s just becoming a lot more visible now because of the advent of social media and because of the television and all other things. It’s becoming a lot more evident, that people are talking about, you can become anything that you want to become. And so the minorities are the people on the fringes of society, that are the ones that are trying to drive the agenda of all of humanity have created this massive canceled culture. So that if you don’t accept the minorities, or you have a certain language that seems that you have any kind of bias, whether it’s true or not, you will be canceled.
Where do you think that comes from ‘canceled culture?’ Doesn’t come from God because God never cancels you. And yet people are beginning to live in fear right now around the world of stepping out of line of society norms, in fear of being canceled. Right? So, you know, if you take Elon Musk, he is in the process of taking over Twitter, since he decided to take over Twitter and there was all kinds of things going on about that. But since he decided to take over Twitter, suddenly all of the people that are on the left side of America have started to speak about how this is a big blow to democracy. You know why they say that about Elon Musk? Because Elon Musk says, “I’m gonna open up Twitter. And I’m not going to kick people off Twitter, because they express a different political opinion or a different opinion about the guys who say COVID is like this or someone’s like that.”
They’ll allow terrorists to use the platform, but they wouldn’t allow American presidents to use the platform. Because they don’t like his agenda. So since he has taken over Twitter or is busy taking over Twitter they now are looking at ways of reducing the blow that his platform is going to bring to the democratic liberal agenda. Why? Because they have censored any voice that speaks against a liberal agenda. So what does that sound like, “Perform like we tell you how to perform or you’re out. We will tell you what your performance should look like, we will tell you what your performance must sound like, and if we agree with it we will let you do what you want to do. If we don’t agree with you then we’ll cancel you.”
Popular culture. So where does that leave the church, popular culture? If that creeps into the church and I’m sorry to say unfortunately it is in the church because the people out there come to church in here. And so, they come with their ideas that they learnt from somewhere else and they come and they say, “Well if I don’t like that person in the church then I’ll have something to say about that person.” Why would you want to say something about somebody that’s your brother? Why would you want to? “Well, they’re not performing the way I think they should perform.” Well, you know where that comes from now. What are you supposed to do then? Well, let’s look at the power of love and give them some slack so that the power of love can work. But you don’t understand they’re hurting my feelings. They are behaving in an unexpected way.
By the way, I need to just bring some clarity about this. That when I’m standing from the pulpit and say, “I’m a human being and if you put your trust in me as a human being, I will fail you.” Here’s why I can say that with confidence because trust is a two-way street. You might have an expectation of me that I don’t know of and if I don’t deliver according to your expectation; I’ve already let you down. It may be nothing to do with whether I am trustworthy. It may just be everything to do with your expectation of the way I should behave in a particular way or in a circumstance or in a situation or in an environment. And I do something different from what you expect and because I do something different to what you expect you say, “I don’t trust you.” So, I let you down. But it’s a two-way street this, right?
This is such an obscure thing and because I know humans and the way humans think and the way they behave especially when there are spiritual forces involved in the Christian’s life. We need to be careful of what expectations we have of people. Because that’s what the Bible says we shouldn’t know each other after the flesh, but after the spirit. Because then if I know you after the spirit, I know your spirit is born-again and your spirit wants to live like Jesus. So if you come at me with your flesh, then I should say, “I recognize flesh talk here let me come back at you with spirit.” And if you can’t come back at someone with spirit then rather be quiet and say, “I hear you.” Don’t get into agreement with the way they are operating in the flesh. Also don’t get offended because show me the person that’s never offended anybody. You might say, “Well I have never done it willingly”, it doesn’t make it different. If you’ve offended someone unwillingly it’s still offence. And if you did it willingly it’s still the same hurt.
You can shout me down because I’m preaching good. So, trustworthiness is something different because if someone is trustworthy then it means that most of the time you can expect them to behave in a certain way. And they will have certain things that are happening in them with them around them and you can, I don’t want to don’t want to say predict, but you can be sure that there is always going to be a certain type of response. If there’s not; if that person is doing something out of the ordinary then you should rather be asking, “Why?” Maybe there’s something God is doing with that person rather than make the assumption the first thing, “I’m at fault or he’s at fault. Maybe there’s something that God’s doing, amen.
Second Peter chapter 1 verse 19, 19 And so we have the prophetic Word confirmed, which you do well to heed as a light that shines in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts; 20 knowing this first, that no prophecy of Scripture. Everybody say this with me, “No prophecy of scripture. [Congregation repeats after Pastor John] no prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpretation. The Bible, the Word of God, the prophetic scriptures are not for private interpretation. They are clearly written and clearly spoken. 21 For prophecy never came of the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit. (1 Peter 1:19-21, NKJV).
So holy men in times past were raised up to be prophets and as they prophesied, they were not speaking as men they were speaking under the anointing, the inspiration, motivated, driven if you like, by God to speak words that they themselves were not thinking of speaking. But they themselves were motivated, almost driven by God to speak as vessels. Let’s talk about New Testament prophets for a moment. New Testament prophets are, generally speaking, they are five-fold ministry gifts that God brings into the body of Christ, and they will prophesy. Most of the time these New Testament prophets will have inspirational teachings, in other words, they will be led by God to speak to the church of the Lord Jesus in a way that will inspire them, motivate them, and protect them with words of something that is happening in the world at the time.
I will never forget, the most clear presentation of that prophetic gift was after the nine-eleven incident in America. Of course, America went into a tailspin and there was a lot of fear, and a lot of things were going on in America at the time. Brother Kenneth Copland for a number of years after that he began to speak against fear, and he began to talk about how the love of God and how faith works and how the love of God casts out fear. He talked about the love of God being the hanger, the rod of a curtain that you hang faith on, and you can’t have faith without the love of God functioning. He went on for years actually, I think it was 3 years if my memory serves me correctly that he constantly preached about the love of God that casts out fear. And that you should not be living in fear, and you should be walking in the love and the power of a sound mind. What was happening?
God was using his voice and his inspiration of his prophetic gift to bring something to the body of Christ that they could hold on to and give them direction and give them strength, give them substance, that they can use in a time when things were in turmoil. Any prophecy that is given in the Old Testament and any prophecies that are in front of us that are in the New Testament and modern-day leaders that God has raised up to prophecy, it should be something that we can hold onto that will give us direction, that will help us get through either Church-wide or government-wide, nationwide or global issues. Amen.
Now if someone is not necessarily a prophet, but they are apostolic in their calling, they will have moments in their lives when they will prophesy. And it will be the same as if a prophet was prophesying because their apostolic calling will include prophetic speaking. Such a person for us is Brother Jerry, who operates in an apostolic anointing. And he will speak a prophetic word, and we receive it as a holy man would speak it; and we live by it. Amen.
Over the years there have been times when I would get in this pulpit, and the Lord would begin to speak through me, and I would prophesy things, and I don’t, I don’t do that every Sunday, I don’t do that every time I get in the pulpit; I do it as the Holy Spirit leads me. And if you go back to all the prophecies that I’ve given, they’ve all, they’ve all come to pass. In one way or another, they’ve come to pass. Some years ago, I was standing here in Witbank, and I began to prophesy at the beginning of the year, and I told the Witbank people, I said, “There is danger coming. There’s an economic, there’s an economic downturn coming in Witbank.”
And I said, “You better get your life, your financial life into order, pay up all of your debt, make sure that you’ve got an extra bit of income in the bank, do all of that; I prophesied that from this pulpit. I believe it was January, by April that year Highveld Steel closed down, retrenched 3000 people, it had a big impact in this economy. Now, you know, many people say, “Well, Pastor John, how do we you know a prophet?” This is one of the ways you can know a prophet, if he says something that specific, and then it doesn’t come to pass, well, then you can say, “But what happened Pastor John?” But it did come to pass. I had no inside knowledge, that wasn’t something that was information that was available to anybody; I mean, it just, it just happened.
Most of those things are just conversations happening behind closed doors at senior executive level when they happen, and sometimes they’ll call in senior union leaders and try and resolve the problem before they do such a dramatic step, but certainly, people like me in the street won’t know about it until they’re ready to talk about it. They certainly weren’t ready to talk about it in the same time that I prophesied it. Ja neh. Second Peter chapter two, verse one, ¹ But there were also false prophets among the people, even as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Lord who bought them, and bring on themselves swift destruction. ² And many will follow their destructive ways, because of whom the way of truth will be blasphemed. ³ By covetousness, what is covetousness? Covetousness is something that you desperately want or you are greedy for. ³ By covetousness they will exploit you with deceptive words; for a long time their judgement has not been idle, and their destruction does not slumber.
What’s going on here? The apostle Peter is talking about people. So if you take my description of a prophet, a prophet is someone who has inspired words, right? So they will present themselves; people that have inspired teachings, but they will be false words, inspired false words and false teachers that will be among you. And, ¹ who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Lord who bought them, and bring on themselves swift destruction. ² And many, many, many will follow their destructive ways because of whom the truth will be blasphemed. (2 Peter 2:1-3 NKJV).
Now, you might look at that scripture and you say, “Joh, Pastor John, how am I going to find out what someone’s heresy is, if I don’t even know the whole Bible yet?” Well, I’m here today to tell you the most obvious one that you can look at, the most obvious one. So the most obvious one I’ve been talking about in popular culture today is, “Become anything you want to become. Do whatever you want to do. dream as big as you want to dream and go after your dream. Don’t let anything stop your dream.” Really? Is your dream bigger than God’s plan for your life?
Come on, let’s talk, let’s talk turkey here. Is your dream bigger than God’s plan for your life? What do you say? How is it possible that you can dream bigger than the plan that God has for your life? Does He not say that He can do more than anything you can even think of, that’s in your wildest imaginations, anything that you can plan, you can think of you can dream of you can imagine; He can do Super abundantly above all that you can think of. What’s He saying? Well, if you’re in His plan, you can dream as big as you want to in His plan, and He will make it come to pass because in His plan and purpose for your life that’s where you can dream big, because you’re in His purpose. But to say, “I can become anything I want to become, and do whatever I want to do.” That is a heresy. Why? Because Jesus didn’t pay a price for you to think that you can do whatever you want.
I mean, He made all of the Heavenly Father’s dreams come true, did He not? What was that? To reconcile man back to God. That’s what the whole reason for Jesus coming was, reconciling man back to God. And so, if there is going to be false teachers, and false prophets among you, and they’re going to come with heresies, deceptive truths, that will even say, “Don’t follow God.” Which one of these are, do you not see that this one alone is a heresy? This is a deceptive truth, because what will happen is that you come to church and the people in church, not this church hopefully, but in churches today, all around the world, there are people that are saying, “Come on, you can just press for more, you can do more, you can become more in God, you can do anything”, but they speak in it out of context of the plan and purpose of God for your life.
They’re talking about performance, not power. They’re talking about personality, not the promise of God that releases the power of God. So, when you find people go to churches, and there are churches that are extremely inspiring, and they, they even use lots of scriptures, and they use lots of things to speak about God, and all of it is, “Be the best that you can be.” Well, how do I get to be the best that I can be? How do I get to be the best that I can be? The best that I can be is to become what God created me to be. It’s not whatever I choose to be. It’s not whatever my talent that I have, says I can be.
Talent, hey? Talent. Well, you have many forms of talent, but I don’t want to get ahead of myself today. But next week, hopefully, Lord willing, I’ll be able to talk to you about talent. But there are scriptures in the Bible that talks about talent. And I’m going to talk about it, in the Scripture, it refers to finances, but it actually refers to your ability to take what God’s given you and to multiply it. And so, we will talk about talent. And we will talk about how God sees talent, not how the world sees talent. How God sees talent.
So let me give you a little bit of an insight into this. The world will decide how much talent you have, or you don’t have. And they’ll put a whole lot of processes in place to measure your talent. And if they like what your talent can produce, then they will try and escalate and elevate you in your talent, so that they can maximize the potential of your talent, to see who’s going to be the next star, so that everybody makes money out of your talent. You think they got God’s ordained purpose in mind for you when they’re doing that? For anybody, this is all about making money. This is all about being famous and making money. At the heart of it, it’s greed. It’s covetousness. Anyway, next week. This came out in the car last night on our way home from a farm.
If you live in perception, instead of truth, you will open yourself to deception. You see, personality will create perceptions. Personality will create perceptions. That’s what personalities do. Personalities are very good at creating perceptions. So that if you live in a perception, rather than in truth, you will live in, you will have deception. Perception is not truth. And if I am skilled at creating a perception, then I can get you to do whatever you want because of perception. But perception is not truth. Perception inevitably comes from rounded words, not straight words. Rounded words means; I will give you enough information and create a perception in your mind to make you think I’m doing one thing, but I’m actually doing many things. But if you just think I’m doing this one thing, then I’ll get the end result from you, I’ll get the kind of feedback from you that I’m looking for. That kind of perception is not functioning in truth. It’s perception that creates deception. Why? Because the whole truth is not on the matter. It’s not out in the open. I’m still preaching very well today.
I’m setting you up to talk to you about end times and prophecy. Because I’m approaching it slowly from a particular direction that I hopefully will bring it really clear to you. The only way out of deception is correction. Only way out of deception is correction. Rejection of correction will enforce your perception as the highest form of self-believing. Rejection of correction will enforce your perception as the highest form of self-believing. To the point where your deception that comes from perception will actually feel like truth to you. Meantime is just an enforcement of your self will. Your self-believing.
This applies to all issues and relationships in life. So, you will know this. I’ve said these many times from this pulpit. If I want to live in faith, I also have to live in honesty. I can’t live in faith without being honest. But I can’t stay in the honest conversation. I’ve got to stay in the conversation of truth. So, why is honesty important to live by faith? Well, if I say I have no debt as a step of faith activation, but I’ve got a mountain of debt. I’m denying the fact that I have debt. What I have to do is be honest about how I got the debt. I’ve got to do my best in the meantime to manage the debt. So now, honestly, I recognize that the income that comes into my life has partly got to go to fix the debt. But I don’t have to use all of the income to fix the debt, I can use some of the income to sow to the future release from debt, provided that my honesty leads me to the truth of the Word, which says that my way out of my debt is the Word and what the Word says I must do, not what man says I must do.
So, when I was in debt, I had to manage the debtors that were around me. And so I didn’t run away from them. I called them and I spoke to them. And I told them what my situation was. And I said, “I can’t pay a lot, I’ll pay a little, but I will pay this every month.” And so interest was accumulating on interest. I couldn’t help that. I had to have integrity and honesty with my debtors. My creditors. Okay. The people who I was in debt to, mostly they were the banks. And so, I would speak to them, but I would… And so, somebody would say, well take all of your money and pay off your debt as soon as you can, because it’s accumulating. Well, that would tell me that that system is still my Lord. But the truth is that I got myself into that problem, not God. So, now I have to trust God to get me out of that problem. And He has got a very specific way of getting me out of the problem.
So, His specific way of getting me out of the problem is, “John, take the Word, put it in your heart, speak it. Put it in your heart, speak it.” So, every month I give, I pay up some of my debt, I still tithe. Some people will say, “Well, you got to give your tithe to pay off your debt.” No, I’ve managed my debtors, my creditors, I’ve managed it. I’ve told them how much I can pay. When I did all of that, I did all that so I can still tithe. Well, why would you keep tithing when all this interest is accumulating on interest, and it’s increasing your debt? Because my trust is more in God than it is in the ability to pay off my debt. That’s why I kept tithing.
So not only did I just keep tithing, I decided to take more of my income and put it as offerings. Well, Pastor John, are you not being irresponsible? No, I have honestly faced my creditors. And I honestly understand where I’m at. Now, Truth has got to take over in my life. So, I cannot live in a perception that some way God’s going to bring a miracle, and somehow someone’s going to walk in and just pay off all of my debt. I made it, I got to fix it. But now God says, “Let Me and you walk in truth, the same truth that brought you prosperity. But unfortunately, you misused your prosperity to make debt.” My bad. Modern day language, right? My bad.
But then the Lord said, “Okay, now John, you trust Me. And let’s walk together on this thing, and we’ll get you free.” So, the same way I’ve got prosperous, is the same way I’ve got free. I put the word of God in my heart, and I spoke it. I put the word of God in my heart, and I spoke it. And I spoke to that mountain of debt, and I commanded it to be moved. So, God started to do supernatural things.
He increased my business, increased my income, increased the ability to take home things and we decided that if God could bring such a huge amount of money into our hands so quickly, that he could do it another time and another time. I would have been tempted to take all of my money and pay off as much debt as possible, because it would reduce the interest and it would reduce all those things. But I got into agreement with Pastor Sharon and I said, “Sharon, we have this outstanding arrangement with our creditors but if God can bring this much money in so soon, that our faith is working, then he can do it again and again.” So we tithe 10% of the gross income of all of the profits that we made, all of the commission, everything of the gross, not the net. And some people would say, “Well, why would you do that Pastor John?” Well, it’s because I wanted a gross, a gross relief, not a net relief. Hope that doesn’t sound gross to you.
So then the next year, my income doubled and so we once again tithed on the gross and gave 10% of that gross the next year. The next year, my income doubled again. Now I’m earning big money and the people think that when you start to receive cheques that are millions of rands on a single cheque, you know, transfers into your bank, whatever the case might be. Cheques those days are still mostly cheques when you receive a big cheque like that. I mean, it was an exception, because when you receive the cheque, it was after tax and when you putting a check into your account, I’m talking about in the 90s, and the cheque is over a million Rand. You know how much you’ve earned after tax. That’s after tax money. Hello. In the 90s.
We decided to tithe on the gross and then offer another 10% on the gross. Well, why would you do that? Because I’ve been speaking the Word of God, that I’m debt free through the miracle power of Jesus. I’m debt free through the miracle power of Jesus. I’m debt free through the miracle power of Jesus. I’m debt free through the miracle power of Jesus, I was counting on the miracle power of Jesus making me debt free, not my savvy mindset. That’s what got me into trouble was the fact that I wasn’t so savvy. Anyway, by the third year, I was already 80% out of debt. In the middle of the third year, three and a half years later, I made my final payment to the banks, credit cards, banks, everything, final payment. From that day, to this day, we do not live in debt. Amen. It’s our choice to do everything we do in our life with cash. It’s not a nice situation to be in like that. Praise the Lord. Hallelujah.
There have been times when I’ve used the system of the world when we’ve taken cars, for example, there was a period of time when we were doing a lot of mileage between Joburg and Witbank and the best option for us was to go to an organization and say, We will like rent this car from you for a period of time and then when the three year contract is up, we will ensure that we only do the mileage that is allowed on the car and give it back to you. Well, I didn’t want to drive a car that I was putting a lot of mileage on and then have to own it and try and sell it. To me that was the best deal that I could get from a tax point of view from driving a safe car, with my wife in the car, and all of that kind between Joburg and Witbank all the time and so we would do that. That’s just wisdom. But I never overspent and bought a bigger car than I should have bought so that I couldn’t make the payments. Amen. I don’t know how I got talking about this this morning. But the Lord obviously had something in it for us.
I am wanting you to just see that, that if people want to come around you and not speak truth to you. They, it’s not going to sound like it’s not true. In fact, if they’re going to come and speak words to you that are going to deceive you, then almost always, it’s going to sound so much like the truth that you are going to have to work very hard at making, discerning what’s different here. Because obviously everybody’s talking about be all that you can be, dream whatever you want to be and do whatever you can do and, and take life by both your handfuls and live life as big as you can live life. Go after everything you can get. Well, the whole world is saying that and the churches are preaching that too. So where does that leave you in the truth? Where is the truth? What is the truth of this matter?
So the truth of this matter is, you can think as big as you like, as long as you’re in the purposes of God for your life. If you don’t know what the purpose of God for your life is, then that would be your number one, your number one objective is to find out what the purpose and the plan of God is for your life. Not how big you can dream based on the talent that I have, or I don’t have. Because if you’ve got talents, and you’ve got dreams, then you’re going to be a self made person. Well, doesn’t that sound grant, becoming a self made man or a self made woman? Yeah, I can stand up and say, “I’m self made” and so that’s what you’ll get. Self made. You can take all of that glory to hell with you. You can.
The whole world is living like that, and they’re all full of glory and they’re all full of themselves about how big and how powerful they are. And just in case this thing wasn’t deceptive enough, you’ll, they’ll really talk well about some of these professional athletes and some of the stars, and they’ll talk, how down to earth that person is, how in touch with himself he is and how well he speaks or she. And aren’t they just such normal ordinary people? But they’re still self made people with all of their talent and God has had what to say about it in your life? Well, I can feel the resistance of the culture out there, I can feel the spiritual forces, I can feel them at work already, just because of the light that I’m bringing. I can feel them wanting to come into your mind as soon as you walk out of this building to tell you, “That Pastor is not telling you the truth. That’s not real. That’s not real. That’s not really how everybody lives.”
Yes, that’s the whole point. Everybody lives like that. Wide is the road that leads to destruction, and narrow is the road of those who find life and walk in life. So, but the whole thing is, you should follow where the majority of people go, because they must be right. No, they’re wrong. Because they’re walking in self glorification. “Well, Pastor John, how is it possible for us to go from self glorification to God glorification?” It’s a choice and it’s a steadfast, determined choice that you walk this way. And sometimes you gotta make a choice every day when you get up. Because when you wake up in the morning, you feel like, you know, what am I going to do today? And all these thoughts come into your mind about, about if I could only just go in there and smack a few people around and do whatever, you know, if I could just be free of this, or if I could just do something I could change my circumstances? Well, I promise you, if you stick with God, your circumstances will change.
So if God did not spare angels who sinned. This is the same chapter, 2 Peter chapter two, verse four, 4 For if God did not spare the angels who sinned, but cast them down to hell and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved for judgment; 5 and did not spare the ancient world, Remember, I said, ancient paths to new discoveries. 5He did not spare the ancient world, but saved Noah, one of eight people. If Noah had started building an ark, and said, how can I build this ark when no one else is building an ark? He would have died with his family, like everybody else on the planet. Just because you’re in the minority doesn’t need to make the majority right. But that’s not the way the world works. The world wants to work by making you conform to a majority thinking. It’s called the institutions.
So, 5 and did not spare the ancient world, but saved Noah, one of eight people, a preacher of righteousness, bringing in the flood on the world of the ungodly; 6 and turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah into ashes, condemned them to destruction, making them an example to those who afterward would live ungodly; So they became the examples of what would come to people that are ungodly in their thinking. So how was their behavior? Their behavior is: “We will serve whatever God we want to. We will have sex as we want to. We will drink what we want to. We will eat what we want to. We will do whatever we feel is best for ourselves, and we will do whatever we feel like.” They had no idea of, there’s a consequence of a God who made us. Both Noah and at the time of Noah, all the people that were living at that time, and Sodom and Gomorrah, they behaved as they wanted to behave.
Can I put it this way? They did whatever they wanted to do. They became whatever they wanted to become. Whatever their hearts desired, whatever their lust was, whatever their greed was, whatever they coveted, they did that. There was no restraint. They were lawless. There was no restraint. How much restraint do you think there is in the world right now? Just about everywhere in the world, law and order is taking a beating. So either the countries are dictators through law, military might, or the free world as you’d like, is becoming more and more lawless. So the one is an illegitimate law that is on people demanding performance, and the other one is the free speech, lawlessness. Free thinking, free acting lawlessness. Both of those two are not the way God operates. I am creeping up on teaching you about end times.
So, by making them an example to those who afterward would live ungodly; 7 and delivered righteous Lot, who was oppressed by the filthy conduct of the wicked 8 (for that righteous man, dwelling among them, tormented his righteous soul from day to day by seeing and hearing their lawless deeds). If you think you’re living in the world, and you are not tormented by the unrighteous deeds that are just blatantly being shown before you, they do torment you. How do they torment you? You see them getting away with it, and you say, how can they get away with it when God requires me as a church going member, a righteous member, a godly member of the church, how come I have to live in a way, but they can get away with anything that they want? Those kinds of thoughts torment you. They’re designed to torment you, so that if you want to be free of the torment, you just say: “Ag well, I’m going to live like them, then I don’t have to be tormented anymore.”
But it’s too late. You already have light in you. So if you live as a Christian, you got the light of God in you, then the Holy Spirit will always lead you back to truth. And then you’re even more tormented. Because you know you’ve made the wrong choices. If you haven’t felt that, you will. Because for a time, people can take their conscience and say: “I’m not going to listen to my conscience, I’m just going to shut it down.” And you can, the Bible says, you can sear your conscience, you can just shut it down. But the Holy Spirit in you will never let you, never let you rest. He will convince you and He will convict you, so that you can get to a point where you repent from that way of thinking, and then you can come back to the way of truth.
You see, it’s a perception that creates torment. It’s a perception that creates deception. And only correction can bring you back to truth. Hallelujah. So, verse nine, 9 then the Lord knows how to deliver the godly out of temptations and to reserve the unjust under punishment for the day of judgment, 10 and especially those who walk according to the flesh in the lust of uncleanness and despise authority. What? What? Especially those who walk according to the flesh, in the lust of uncleanness, the lust of uncleanness, and despise authority. In other words, if you have no constraint on your life, on your behavior before God, then you will have no constraint on your behavior before people. And so, if you despise the authority of God, then you will despise the authority of men. How can you welcome the authority of God, and then despise the authority of men? Hey? Because if you live in God, God from the time of beginning, He has always created a scenario where men would be representing delegated authority on the earth.
They are presumptuous, self willed, they are not afraid to speak evil of dignitaries. (2 Peter 2:4-10, NKJV).Not to put a fine point on it, but what is a dignitary? Someone who behaves in an elevated, dignified manner. Right? Dignitary. We immediately want to say, “Well, a dignitary is someone that is of high importance.” Well, if you behave in a way that is always in line with God’s truth, are you not in God’s mind and elevated being? Because if you obey His Word and you constantly do His word, you have elevated your life out of the masses, and you walk in a dignified way.
So these lawless, self-willed people, have no trouble speaking evil of dignitaries. So if you are a regular churchgoer, and you are in church, and you are living your life for God, and people speak evil of you, they are self willed lawless people who have no idea what they’re speaking about. And if they are so easily willing to speak about you that way, be sure that there is some lawlessness going on in their lives. They are not lawful people. Because only when you have the kind of lawful submission to God, then you will begin to see other people with dignity, as they are following God. In other words, you don’t know them after the flesh, but you know them after the spirit. So the Bible says that even angels will not speak evil of those people. In other words, angels will not speak evil, will not speak against what children of God are doing. They will dare not, even if you’re doing wrong, they will dare not speak against your wrongdoing. Because they see Jesus in you. They do not see the bad works in a moment that you are doing. I’m preaching really good today.
11 Whereas angels, who are greater in power and might, then us humans, do not bring a reviling accusation against them before the Lord. Even angels cannot bring a reviling accusation against you or me before the Lord. But the church people who are lawless will quickly bring an accusation against any one of God’s people because they feel like it. But you can do that if you are lawless. You can do that if you are self-willed because then your self-nature is the one that is elevated.
I’ve got a few more verses to read, and then I’ll be done. 12 But these, like natural brute beasts made to be caught and destroyed, speak evil of the things they do not understand, and will utterly perish in their own corruption. People who have these kinds of words, people that will so willingly say these kinds of things, they will perish in their own corruption. This is what the Word of God says. If you think this does not include Christians, then you don’t understand that the apostle Peter was writing this to Christians. Because there are people in amongst the church people of Christians that do this.
So, 13 they will receive the wages of unrighteousness, as those who count it pleasure to carouse in the daytime. They are spots and blemishes, carousing in their own deceptions while they feast with you. Do you see that this is people that are in the church? They are carousing with you while they are living in their deceptions. Do you remember what I said? Perceptions will lead you to deceptions and the only thing that can reverse a deception is a correction. And only when you receive the correction can God bring you back to truth that will set you free. But if people don’t receive correction, they will continue to live in their deceptions. And then their whole lives are formed and they continue to form perceptions and they live with the art of perception. And so they have deception and perception leads to deception and more deception leads to others’ perception. And then what happens, in the end, is that nobody, you’ve got no firm footing as to where to place your life. Because you won’t receive correction so you can’t live in truth. And so, you will eat the wages, you will have the wages of that.
This is what the Bible says. These are people that carousing in their own deceptions while they feast with you, 14 having eyes full of adultery and that cannot cease from sin. Do you know what adultery is? Adultery is worshiping something that you can’t have or that is more powerful than your will. It’s idolatry, it’s adultery. All of these things flow together. 14 Having eyes full of adultery that cannot cease from sin, enticing unstable souls. They have a heart trained in covetous practices and are accursed children. How can you speak such words? I am not, the Bible is. This was happening in the day of the apostle Peter, and he was writing to the church and he was saying there are children in the church that are accursed because they are living like this. They are living with perceptions and deceptions and they are not ready to be corrected. So they are becoming false teachers and false prophets and they carouse among you and have your feasts with you, but they are living with you in deception. And they want to deceive you.
15 They have forsaken the right way and gone astray, following the way of Balaam the son of Beor, who loved the wages of unrighteousness; 16 but he was rebuked for his iniquity: Balaam a prophet was rebuked in his iniquity, a dumb donkey speaking with a man’s voice restrained the madness of the prophet. (2 Peter 2:11-15, NKJV). Like I said to you, if God wants to actually stop you from saying something, He can cause a donkey to come and say what needs to be said. In that case, Balaam was being used by a king to speak a curse against Israel and God said, no, no, you can’t do that. You won’t do that. I’ll have a donkey speak the right words because you’re a dumb prophet. Why are you a dumb prophet? Meaning you’re just stupid? Why are you being so stupid? Because you think you can curse Israel who are God’s people and get away with it? You think you can speak evil against the dignitaries of God. You can be lawless and walk in your deception, and you think you can get away with it.
So here’s an argument for you. But I will say to you, “But what if the dignitaries are wrong? Shouldn’t someone actually be able to expose the faults of a dignitary?” And that’s your business? Somehow that makes it your business? Well, of course, you can do whatever you want. With that kind of argument you’re used to doing what you want. You’re used to your own self-will. You’re used to perception and deception. You’re used to it. So, but then, then I have to say to you, Well, yeah, you can talk about dignitaries that way, but why don’t you rather take the sons of Noah who found their father drunk?
And so what two sons of Noah did was they took a blanket and they walked backwards into his nakedness and they covered it. Whereas the other son actually went against his father. Some people say he didn’t just talk about the shamefulness of his father’s nakedness. There is a legitimate theological exegesis that says that he actually had sex with his father. Like it or not, he uncovered his shame of his drunkenness. So, the end result of it is that he never got the blessing of God. In fact, he was cursed. The other two sons who covered the nakedness of thy father, they were blessed eternally. In the divine order of God, they were blessed, and all thy sons and thy sons and thy sons, and they were blessed into the future of eternity.
Which dignitary do you want to speak against now? Why do you want to take it upon yourself to speak against a dignitary? Why would you want to do that? Well, obviously, if you are self-willed and you are used to lawlessness, and you are used to living in deception, and having perceptions and deceptions, then obviously, then you would find that it’s your right to do that because surely they are creating a perception, just like I’m always creating a perception. They’re creating perception. And they want me to believe in the perception that they’ve created because I always live in perception to create deception. So I want to know what they’re deceiving me with their perception. Come on, this is a basic thing, you’re going to accuse someone else of what you think you are. So if you are living in deception and perception and causing people to be deceived, and you’re living in the deception of perception then you’re going to be a target.
If you are living in deception and perception and causing people to be deceived, and you living in the deception of perception, then you’re going to be a target. In your own mind, you’re going to be a target of what are they doing to deceive me with their perceptions? What perceptions are they creating me to deceive me? The next, how they will find themselves in the habit of speaking against dignitaries.
And I get back to this; children honor your mother and your father that it may go well with you. Honor is way higher and better than obedience. If you can’t obey because the rules are too strict, think about honor. Because honor has a lot of rewards and benefits. What’s the downside of not honoring your parents? The downside of it is that you get hurt. Why? Because you open a door for perception and deception to come into your life. And then God is going to bring correction.
16 but he was rebuked for his iniquity: a dumb donkey speaking with a man’s voice restrained the madness of the prophet. 17 These are wells without water, clouds carried by a tempest, for whom is reserved the blackness of darkness forever. That’s not a nice way to end your time on Earth. 18 For when they speak great swelling words of emptiness, they allure through the lusts of the flesh, through lewdness, the ones who have actually escaped from those who live in error. He’s talking about those that are living in truth, they have escaped the course of deception, and they have taken the correction and they are trying to deceive them. 19 While they promise them liberty, they themselves are slaves of corruption; for by whom a person is overcome, by him also he is brought into bondage. (2 Peter 2:16-19 – NKJV).
If you listen to someone with deception, and all of the perceptions that they have, then that person if they defeat you in your truth, then their perception becomes your truth. Be careful who you get into agreement with. Be careful what words you say yes to. Be careful what you get find yourself in. I mean this, Be careful. Don’t just blabber words out. Don’t just look at what everybody else is doing in the office and say I’ll do the same. You heard this kind of thing. We heard this; Oh, you just, you just someone who likes to sweet talk the boss. I’m using nice language here. They don’t normally use nice language like this in the office space. You are the boss’s favorite because you always are a yes man and you sweet-talk the boss. Well, what kind of talk do they want you to have about the boss? Well, the boss is in dignitary, is he not? What kind of talk do they want you to have about the boss?
They want you to get into the same talk as they would talk. Well, he’s not doing a good job. He’s a hard ass man. He doesn’t give us what we deserve. How can anybody work for this guy? They should bring someone else that is more friendly to our cause. Someone that we can actually talk to, someone that understands us. Just to use a few things that they might say, this boss is too hard on us. This boss has got a whole lot of well, okay, you can have the boss that you’re talking about. No, but I’m just telling you like it is with him, or her. Well, if you speak like that about him or her, no matter what he or she is or isn’t, you will have that kind of boss. Because your words will create that relationship with your boss. Why don’t you change your words? Why don’t you talk about your bosses, what do you want your boss to look like?
Well, Lord, I speak to my boss. And I speak kindness, and I speak understanding to him. And I speak a mindset in him or her that is solutions oriented, and they see my value. And they see where I can add things and, and or any of the deception that is between us in our relationship, I ask you to remove it. Now, what are you doing? You’re going to the God of all gods, the Master of everything and you speaking the words that He would speak if He was in your position. Do you think Jesus would just take a bad boss and say, I just accept it? When He already told His disciples, you can speak to the waves and calm them, and you can tell mountains to be cast in the sea. Now you just got to accept the bad boss. No, don’t accept the bad boss. Change the way you talk about them. Don’t be deceived about perceptions. Speak the truth of God’s Word about them; “Lord, I pray for them, and I bless them because Your Word says I must do that.”
Pray for those that are in authority but bless them, and I asked you to do good to them. That’s what I’m asking You to do Lord, “But You don’t understand they are so hard to me, and they serve bad to me that I can’t speak like pray like that.” You can, it’s a choice. Do you want to be one of those that potentially deceived…? Next week, if the Lord willing, I’ll get into it. And I’m finished preaching today. Well, I’m finished reading the Bible preaching today. But do you want to be one of those? The Bible says, that, and I will read it to you in Matthew next week. You want to be one of those that the Bible says, if God hadn’t shortened the time, even the elect would be deceived. Well, how do you stop yourself from being deceived? This is it right here. God will have a messenger come and stand in the pulpit and say, don’t take anything in your life. Don’t take anything in your life for granted. Don’t take anything in your life and say that’s the way it is, that’s the way I must see it. No, speak the life of the Word of God to it. Speak words of life. Amen.
“Well, Pastor John, you don’t know what you’re talking about.” You think? I worked for a boss like that one day. He couldn’t come into the office without using very, very foul language. He was very tough. He was very aggressive. He came to came to downscale the company, and then tried to make it profitable. And if it wasn’t profitable, he was going to end up closing the company. And there I was… He was really such a bad actor. Such a bad person. He was so difficult. He was so angry, certainly in the way that he behaved. He was so angry. He was violent, even he was aggressive, foul language. I mean, it was a terrible climate to work in. Well, obviously, many, many people resigned. Well, he certainly wanted that, he didn’t want to have to retrench people, he would prefer that they resigned and there’s no cost to the company. I know I’m speaking to someone here today.
Anyway, I just went to the Lord. I said, Lord, this foul-mouthed, evil-tempered man is not going to drive me out of this company. I will leave when You say it’s good and ready for me to leave. In the meantime, I speak favor with this man. And I say that when I come into the office, that I am shielded and protected from all of his wrath and all of his anger and all of the words that he would speak against me. He came into the office, and I mean, he wanted me to resign and as many as he could get to resign. But I had some important clients, and I showed – by the will of the Father and by the Word of God, that was in my spirit, – I showed some backbone. And I didn’t take his words of threats in fear. What I did was, I took his words, and I said, I bless him Father, and now You’re going to bless me so that this company can be blessed, regardless of who he is, what he says, and what he doesn’t say. I’m the only one that is standing between him and closing this company, because I’m the blessed person in this company.
The way it started off was, he first invited me to be part of his executive team. But he said, but then you must know John that I own you, and you will work for me 24/7. He said “We have to get this company right, I recognize your potential, I recognize what you’ve done in this company until now. But if you work for me on my executive team, I own you.” I said to him in short order, I said, “No, sir, I can’t accept your offer. I have a wife that I love. I’ve got kids I want to be with, and I go to church.” And I said, “So you can’t own me.” He said, “Well, then you have to leave because I can’t have anybody working with me that’s not, that’s not with me flat out.” I said, “You will have the best of me, sir, but on your conditions, I can’t have them.” So that started the war between him and me. I can’t submit to him the way he wanted me to, so I must leave. Hello.
And so I just began to speak blessing. And I said, “Lord, I’m the one that can actually deliver this company, because Your blessing is on me.” And so it turned out. This very same company down the road, Columbus Stainless, that very same company went out to tender, they were going to buy IBM, you know my story. Then they redid the tender because God gave me a plan and gave me strategic things…I got it by the Holy Spirit. They redid the tender, they remarked the tender, I beat the IBM guys, it was all politically said and done. He even wanted to remove me off the account. But then I got that deal. The deal went through. I got the commission. He got the business, not IBM.
It literally, that one deal turned the company around. It saved many, many, many jobs. Because of that big win, all the other companies that were just ready to wait what is going to happen there and take their business away from us. Everything was, wait a minute, these guys are getting big business here. So there is no ending to them, this is a regeneration. Literally that deal put the company on track. And then when I was done with that deal, I said, “Okay, Lord, now it’s time for me to leave.” And I went and I handed in my resignation, and I ended up working for the next company where God really blessed me.
I became a shareholder in the company. And, I’ve told you this before, one day, I walked into an award ceremony in the industry at the time, I don’t think they have those kinds of things anymore. But in the industry, they had these awards where all the big MD’s and the CEO’s, and it was just a glitzy glamorous thing. And I was to go and receive awards on behalf of the company. And I met my ex boss there. And he stood up at the table with everybody that was sitting, he came away from the table to come and greet me. And he said, “This is one of the best sales guys I have ever met, and he can come and work on my team anytime he wants to.” In public, he said that in front of all of my colleagues, he said that.
How do you think we got to that position? Because of words I spoke? Definitely. They were all about life words I spoke. I didn’t speak what others were speaking. I spoke what God said. Praise the Lord. Praise Jesus. You want to turn your circumstances around? You got to be real about the stuff and say, “Hey, what have I been doing? What words have I been speaking? What kind of dignitaries have I been speaking against? What kind of corruption or corrupt ideas have I been saying? What have I allowed to flood my life and flood my mind and flood my thoughts?” Hey, you got to be honest about this. You can’t hide from it. If you hide from it, then you still walk in deception. And then your perceptions of what happens will continue to be deceived. And then you’re not accepting correction that God is bringing to you today. And if you’re not receiving correction, then you can’t walk in the freedom of truth.
Did you get something out of this today? Do you know why this is important? It’s because the same thing about prophets and deception and all of this kind of stuff, false teachers and false prophets. In the book of Matthew that we are going to talk about next week. I thought I would get to it this week, but the Lord had me speak what I had to speak anyway. But it talks about; In the end of time, there will be false prophets and false teachers. They seem to be everywhere in the end days. They seem to be everywhere. Well, why is that? Because, because the enemy wants the church to prevent the church from walking in power. He wants the church to rather walk in performance, rather than in power. And if you believe in performance as an individual, then how are you going to translate that living in power in the church when you as an individual are performance oriented? Don’t you rather want to walk in power than performance? Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord. Praise Jesus. Praise the Lord. Hallelujah.
Won’t you all stand with me please? Normally, the Foot in the Message is at five o’clock, Pastor Sharon. Today you made it quarter past four. Is that right? 04:15? Or is it five o’clock? It’s five o’clock. It’s five o’clock. The reason I’m checking on that is because we have a Slipstream Crit at two o’clock. So I’m just making sure that you know, that Foot in the Message is at five o’clock. So that you guys can actually do the krit, get home, shower, rest up a little bit, and then come back and be in Foot in a message at the right time. At five o’clock. I’m just checking that we had it all together here. Amen. Praise the Lord. Glory to God.
Won’t you put your hand on your heart here, and say “I am a son of God. I thank You, Lord, that you are alive in my heart. I declare I do not walk in deception, or even perceptions. I seek Your truth. I live in Your truth. I’m willing to be corrected. I receive correction so that I can be free and live in truth, in Jesus name. Amen. Hallelujah. Glory to God. I know that this message that I preached today is a powerful message. It’s the; God pulled it out of me in a slightly different way than I expected today. But that’s what happens when you prepare yourself in your heart and you are led by the Holy Spirit, then He will do what He needs to do. Hallelujah. Praise the Lord.
I want to just declare that the peace of God will rest upon you. And all of the turmoil that’s happening in the world right now, turmoil that might be happening in your job, turmoil that might be happening in your family’s, turmoil that might be around you. I declare that you are protected from that turmoil and that chaos, and all of the confusion that exists in the world out there. And I speak peace to your mind. I speak peace to your heart. I speak peace to your business. I speak peace to your life of income and everything that you are believing God for. And I say in the name of Jesus, walk in strength. Walk in the life of God. Walk in the light of God.
Do not walk in confusion and walk in deception. Do not walk in that, but walk in light, walk in truth, walk in the life of God in Jesus name. And I pray that whatever you put your hand to will prosper. Wherever you will walk, God will give you that territory and cause you to be blessed and prosperous as you go. In the name of Jesus, I speak to those of you that are believing God for an increase of income. And I say in the name of Jesus may the income increase. May it increase. May your turnover increase. May your income increase. May it be supernatural the way that God causes things to happen around you. In the name of Jesus. Glory to God.
It is my request before the Father that you experience His abundance and His blessing. And I pray further that you are protected by His Word, by the blood of Jesus and all the angels that are around you that no weapon formed against you will prosper. That you are blessed going out and blessed coming in. Every morning, every evening, every day wherever you go, that God’s life rises big and strong inside of you, in the name of Jesus. I declare that you go forth, enjoy, and that you prosper in all that you do, in the name of Jesus. And you all agree with me by saying? [Congregation: Amen] Oh, and you all agree with me saying? [Congregation: Amen!] Much better. Thank you. Bye, everybody.
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