18 August 2024 Motion for Promotion Part 5 Pastor John Bendixen (WTB)
Scripture reference: Colossians 3:10-11 (NKJV); Colossians 3:10-11 (KJV); Daniel 1:9 (NKJV); Daniel 1:17-21 (NKJV); Daniel 6:1-3 (KJV); 1 Corinthians 12:12-25 (NLT)
Pastor Sharon: So, Father, we thank You now for Your Word that comes to us. Our hearts are ready to receive. Our hearts are ready to believe. We’re listening for all the correction. We’re listening for all the direction. We’re listening for all the instruction today, and we’re listening to all the revelation that comes to us today, Father. And we purpose in our hearts that we will not be hearers only. We purpose in our hearts that we will be doers of this message that comes to us today. And we thank You for Your anointing that rests mightily upon the messenger, rises up mightily within him, upon him, and within him Father and he says what he hears You say, and he hears You say. Oh, Father and he does what he sees You do, and he sees You do, Lord. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. His very thoughts are infused with the energy and the thoughts of God Himself for us and for Himself today. And we all say in Jesus’ name, amen. Hallelujah. Oh, thank you. Music ministry.
Pastor John: Thank you, guys, thank You Lord, thank You Lord, thank You Lord. Praise Jesus, praise Jesus, well thank You Lord for being here today. Your presence is with us today, that we receive everything that You have for us today, in the mighty name of Jesus. Do you all agree? Amen. Will you just turn to somebody, one or two people, and say, “I’m in agreement with the pastor today.” And then you may be seated. Say, I welcome you to church if you must. Thank you, guys. Praise the Lord. How you all doing? Are you good? I’m doing good. Thank you, Pastor Christi.
You know, there’s some good things and some challenging things about being in the bush. If you go to the bush, it’s peaceful and quiet and wonderful, and then you occasionally have to fight with a dive-bombing mosquito. And it doesn’t matter how well you sleep, a mosquito has this unique capability of awakening you. And normally, it’s in the middle of the night somewhere, and now you’ve got to try and find the mosquito. Yeah. You know, one day when I’m in heaven, I’m gonna ask the Lord to please show me why He created mosquitoes, because I have no idea why He did that. They serve in my from what I can see, they have, they serve no purpose other than to irritate the humans, you know. I’m sure the animals don’t bother about them, they don’t even feel them. But, anyway, we had a really good time with the men we had a good time away. The Lord showed us some new and wonderful things, and we were truly blessed. I did see on one of the whats-app messages, one of the girls sent out a message saying, “Can the men please come back?” Thank you, Leanne. At least there was someone that was missing us, you know. Praise the Lord. We truly had a marvelous time. There is something that God’s doing in this Ministry, in this church. And, I am delighted to journey with all of you to the, to the new discoveries of what God is doing.
Since we have crossed over and a new season has begun for us, Amen. It’s a marvelous thing to me that I watched, Kobus’ young boys with a plastic snake, trying to find anybody and everybody that they could terrorise with that plastic snake. They did find someone, and his name is Ernest. I don’t know where Ernest is. Somehow, they managed to get the snake into Ernest’s eye line without him realising it was a plastic snake. And he just about jumped off his chair.
So, now we had some good fun and then we ended up finding a very nice water pistol. And, and then, in fact, we had to make sure that the water pistol was no longer available and then they found other ways, like cups of water, to throw on each other. So anyway, we had a good time. We saw some lions and some leopards and some wild dogs and we saw some wonderful things. Not everybody saw all of those things, but we did see some things. So thank you all for praying for us. I believe that there’s a new spirit of unity and a new level of fellowship that is developed amongst the men.
And to me, that was one of the most wonderful things to watch, is to see how everybody had the chance to talk to new people, learn to get to know different new, different people in a different way. And it was wonderful to see the fellowship that exists. And so, you know, I saw some things afterwards. You know, I was just, praying about what had happened and, how the Lord, what the Lord did over the weekend or the last couple of days, and I saw some things, spiritually that God did that I, was unexpected for me. So praise the Lord. And those things will be revealed and manifest amongst us as we go forward. Yeah. Hallelujah.
God has given us a very powerful weapon, and the weapon is to show our trust in Him. If you trust God, there is the most wonderful thing that happens when you trust God. He recognises and reveals Himself more to you because you trust Him. You know, if you are a man and I watched and observed behaviour of the men over the last three or four days and it’s an amazing thing, you know. If there’s a trust relationship that exists, there’s a different level of conversation that can happen. If there’s no trust relationship, well then there’s a very different level of conversation that can happen.
And so, the same applies with God. You know, if you trust God, then you can trust God with many things that otherwise you wouldn’t trust Him with. And that’s our biggest challenge that we face on a daily basis with our lives is we have to trust God that He can do a better job in our lives than we can. Because I promise you, we all think we are the best at doing what we can do for us than anybody else can. Right? Come on. You look at me like I’m talking gibberish. But the fact is that you trust yourself more than anybody else. And God says, “I want you to trust Me more than you trust yourself.” And that is always gonna be the confrontation that we have. Trust God or trust me. And so, yes, you trust you to do for yourself what you want all of the time. The thing is, if you’re gonna trust God that He wants to do for you what He wants to do for you, you may have a conflict where He says, “I want you to do this.” And then you say, “But that’s not what I want to do.” And so it’s a clash of worlds. And that is the essence of all of our walking with God. It’s the clash of worlds. Amen.
Last night, Pastor Sharon, she came and she brought an envelope to me and we have some some offering that we agreed, today. We would put into the offering because we trust God. Amen. So we’re gonna take up an offering right now so that we can show that we trust God with our finances. And if you are a regular tither and you give of your substance to the Lord, then that’s a way for you to show God that you trust Him. You trust Him with your possessions, and you trust Him with your future. Come on. It’s one of the very few things that you can do in life where you can have already spent energy and money comes to you, and now you can give it to God so that you trust Him that all your future energy will be more productive. So, if you believe and trust God with your money, then you are trusting Him with your future, because what you can do with your money, you think is the best thing that anybody can do with your money. But when you give your money to God, He can do a lot more with your money. He really can. Let’s take up an offering, guys. Praise the Lord.
I really, the Lord kind of ticked me off a little bit from a couple of weeks ago when I took an offering right at the end of the service, and He said, “John, I want you to be a little more deliberate about it. I want you to be a little more specific about it.” And this is not because we, as a ministry, we have a need for cash. He wants me to be deliberate about it because He wants something to come to you. He wants you to be putting your trust in Him. He wants you to be speaking words that are in alignment with your giving. Hey. If you’re withholding your money because you think you can do better with it, then you shouldn’t even tithe because if you’re tithing because you think you can do more – it’s an insurance policy. Then you shouldn’t have that insurance policy because you’re still trusting yourself even though you’re tithing. Tithing is not a matter of money you give. It’s about a matter of faith and trust in God. That’s why you tithe. I’m preaching good today. I’m preaching and teaching really good today, so we put our trust in God. Amen.
Jesus tells a story in the New Testament of two men who built houses and the one builds his house upon sand because he wants a quick result, and the other one builds his house upon the rock because he wants it to last forever. And, then He says when the storms of life came, the one that built his house on the rock, it stood forever, but the one who built his house on the sand, it was quickly washed away. When you trust God with your finances, your tithes, and your offerings, let’s pray over the offering, guys. When you trust God with your finances, you might not see the results as quickly as you would want to see them, but you are building your financial future on The Rock, and it will withstand any and every situation. I think you can all stand with me, please.
Just reach out your hands here and just get into agreement with me and say, Father, we thank You in the name of Jesus that these tithes and offerings, this money that we put into Your hands, we put it into Your hands because we trust You. And we thank You that You have promised us that You will never leave us, You will not forsake us, and all our needs will be met according to Your riches in glory by Christ Jesus. And we thank You Father that You are watchful over everything that we need because we put You first. We seek You first, and we thank You Father that we can trust You. In Jesus’ name. And we all agree by saying? Amen. Thank you. You may be seated. Hallelujah.
Over the next couple of weeks, expect something different on a Sunday morning. Hey? Expect something different. Why not? Amen. I would like you to have a marker date and that marker date is September 15th. Sunday, September 15th. I’d like you all to do your utmost bestest to be in church. Please don’t miss that Sunday, whatever happens. We are going to share some things with you in the church about some things that God has put on my heart, some things that God is doing in the church, some directions that we’re taking in the ministry, and so I’d like to share that with you on 15th of September. Amen?
It’s a funny thing about us who plan life, you know, we plan. And so, sometimes when I put out a date, they say, “You’re not giving me enough warning.” And then my answer is, ”But we come to church every Sunday and you know about that and you don’t turn up every Sunday.” So, it’s not actually about our planning. You can’t, I mean, some people just don’t even pitch up on Sundays, but they know every Sunday there’s church, so it’s not our planning, is it? Anyway, anyway. I will tell you that I’m endeavouring by the Holy Spirit, and as part of what we’re doing on the 15th of September, we are endeavouring to be more meaningful and more deliberate about some things that we are sure of in the Lord and the Holy Spirit that we can have as many of our activities as the Lord will allow us to present to you upfront the dates and the times of those things, but we will always remain flexible to what the Holy Spirit can do. Amen. Praise the Lord.
I’m going to read to you from Colossians chapter 3. I’m reading verse 10. In the New King James Bible, it says, 10 and have put on the new man who is renewed in knowledge according to the image of Him who created him, 11 where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcised nor uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave nor free, but Christ is all and in all (Colossians 3:10,11 NKJV). In the old King James Version, I’m going to read it to you, it says this, 10 And have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him (Colossians 3:10 KJV). So, we are renewed into the new man and we have to put on that new man after the image that we have been recreated to. Are you all with me? You understand what this scripture is saying? And so, he tends to explain it a little more. So if you put on the new man that is Christ, then you are no longer going to identify with these categories, and he just lists some categories. So your identity in Christ is greater than whether you are Greek or Jew, whether you are circumcised or uncircumcised, whether you’re a barbarian or a Scythian, whether you’re a slave, a bond person, or free, but Christ is all and in all. In other words, when Christ is in you, you have a whole new image. You have a whole new identity and that identity overrides all other identities. Whatever else you may call yourself. The number one identity is; I identify with Christ. Christ is in me. Christ is my all. Right?
I want to just make a point to you here for a moment about the fact that he talks about bond or free. So that word bond is the word slave, but there were two kinds of slaves. The one kind of slave was a slave who was taken captive through war, through a form of military invasion. And so when a people were defeated, the victorious army would go and take people and make them slaves. Right?
So, I want to be a little practical about it and so I’m going to use Du Toit. Yateer come stand by me, please. How old are you now? Did you say sixteen? Doesn’t look sixteen, he’s a big boy. Now, if I came into, the Du Toit household with a whole bunch of men and I had, say, twenty or thirty men, and we arrived there with guns and with knives and with all kind of military experience and power, and I overwhelmed Louwtjie and I overwhelmed these household and we walked in there and I said, “Now Louwtjie, I’m taking Yateer as my slave. He’s no longer your son. He’s my slave.” And I just remove him from your presence. Get away from your dad because I don’t want you to see him. So you stand here like this. I now own him. His dad can’t get to talk to him. His dad can’t see him. His dad has got nothing to do with him. Effectively, the relationship has been severed because he has no option, he has no choice but to give up his son, because he has to save his life, he has to save whatever he can save.
In those days, I probably would have killed Louwtjie and Zelda and just taken the son, unless I had some use for them, because my military power, my absolute raw power is greater than he has, so I dominate him. Right? So he’s my slave. Now all of his energy, all of his strength, all of his future is mine to command. He doesn’t have a choice. Right? He doesn’t have a choice. So, if I direct him in and I just tell him and I say, “Be gentle about this now. Okay?” I mean, do it like this. Okay? “Go and hit your brother in the face. You must go do it. You must go do it. You don’t have a choice.” [Yateer walks over to Nicoa and pretends to slap Nicoa in the face, and walks back to Ps John.] You see, under natural circumstances, he would not do that. But because his mind took command, he has no choice but to go and do what I tell him to do. In his soul, in his makeup, in his training from his parents, It might go against everything that he is in himself, but he has no choice because he’s mine to command. He must do what I tell him to do. Right?
I mean, doesn’t matter what I choose. I can be a really bad person, and if he just looks at me the wrong way because I could feel it in his attitude when I told him to go and slap his brother. I could feel it in his attitude. Oh, I don’t wanna go do that. Even just mock do it, because he loves his brother. Now if I was a really horrible man, I could say, you look at me bad. Bring me the whip. [Pastor John pretends to whip Yateer’s back with a whip] And I just whip his back, you know, I just whip his back because he’s not obeying me. And it’s my choice to whip him, and he must take it because he’s my slave, okay.
But now let’s just say I’m a really good slave owner. I’m a good man and so somehow, he became my slave. And so now I treat him really well. I treat him really well. I feed him, I look after him, and then one day I say, “Hey, Yateer, do you know where your mom and dad lives?” He says, “Yes.” I said, “Do you think they’re in a good place?” He says, “I’m not so sure.” And so I send him over to his mom and dad, wherever they might be, and I say, “Go and find out how’s your mom and dad.” And he finds out that they’re actually in poverty because of what the circumstances they find themselves. And I say to him, “Hey, Yateer, go and find your mom and dad and bring them, and let’s take care of them because I’m a good slave owner and you’ve been a good slave, right?”
So, he goes over and he fetches his mom and dad and he brings them into my household, and I clothe them and I feed them and I look after them. Hey? And now they’re doing well, he’s doing well, everybody’s doing well, and I just get to the point where I say one day, I say, “Yateer, you and your mom and dad, I don’t need you as slaves anymore. I’m setting you free to go and do whatever you want.” Yateer says, “Where am I going to go that is going to be better than what I have with you?” Right? He says, “Sir, I’ve had this conversation with my parents and we do not want to be free from you. Now we become a bondslave. We are choosing to be your slaves. We are choosing to be your servant because it’s our choice because of how good it is with you. And you are so good. You are such an understanding man who treats us more like family than slaves. So we want to be your family, not your slave, but I choose to be your slave. You command me with whatever you would have normally commanded me with. You command me and I will obey.” Now he is no longer a slave out of circumstance. He’s a slave out of choice. Amen. Thank you, Yateer. Hallelujah.
When Jesus becomes our Lord. When He becomes our Lord, we have an option and our option is to say, “I am going to do what You tell me to do, not because I mean, I’ve got a couple of ways that I can treat God as my Lord. I can be a slave where I need to be whipped all the time, but inside, I and I’ll do what you tell me to do, but I really don’t wanna do it. I really wanna do what I wanna do, but I’m forced to do it. Hey? So what kind of relationship do you think that does? It doesn’t do anybody any good. But if you say, “Jesus, you’re my Lord, not because of how bad You are, but because You’re good, and so command me with everything that You want to command me with. I’m now Your bondslave. I’m Your servant.” There are not many Christians, today, that are prepared to make themselves a bondservant, a bondslave of Jesus. Most people want to have a relationship with Jesus on their terms, not on God’s terms, and so that’s part of the reason why the church is in such a pitiful condition is for that reason.
Okay. There’s a point that I’m going to make to you now, and I’m going to read to you from, Daniel chapter 1 verse 9 and we know that Daniel and his friends, they were slaves. They were slaves and because they were from wealthy families and “well-to-do” families in the nation of the Jews, they went and found these boys, and the king made them his slaves. 9Now God had brought Daniel into the favor and goodwill of the chief of the eunuchs (Daniel 1:9 NKJV). So now they are in the training program of slaves. Hey? I’m emphasising this point. They are slaves to a king. And they must come and do what the king tells them to do. They ask for different eating program and so because they found favour and goodwill with the man who was overseeing the eating program, they were allowed to eat what they needed to eat.
Verse 17, 17 As for these four young men, God gave them knowledge and skill in all learning literature and wisdom; and Daniel had understanding in all visions and dreams. 18 Now at the beginning, at the end of the days, when the king had said that they should be brought in, the chief of the eunuchs brought them in before Nebuchadnezzar. 19 And the king interviewed them; and among them all none was found like Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah: therefore, they served before the king. You understand that this serving was because they were slaves. Their relationship was a slave relationship. They were serving. Right? They were serving out of great knowledge and wisdom and out of favour that God placed on their lives, but they were serving. 20 And in all matters of wisdom and understanding about which the king examined them, he found them ten times better than all the magicians and astrologers who were in all his realm. 21 Thus, Daniel continued until the first year of King Cyrus (Daniel 1:17-21 NKJV).
So I am wanting to make a point to you right now, and the point is, there is much said about Daniel and about his friends, who had a name change because the king wanted them to have names that were Babylonian names. So otherwise, you might know them as Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego those who are Babylonian names, they were not they were not Jewish names. What I’ve just read to you is, they’re Jewish names. Okay? So the king questioned them after all their training. He questioned them, and after questioning them, he found them really wise and he found them really smart, and so he had them serve around him in his courts, in his government. They had them serve, he had them serve him. So, the point I want to make here is, much is said about Daniel and Daniel’s kind of smarts used in the world system. Okay?
So I want to just tell you that Daniel didn’t have a choice about where he was to serve. He was a slave. He remained a slave. As long as he was serving in the government, as long as the Jewish people were slaves, he was a slave. As long as the Jews were a conquered people, he remained a slave. But he outlasted four kings, Daniel. But in every case, the king’s command could terminate his life and one of them nearly did because the politics went against Daniel, and so he had to throw him in the lion’s den. But the king had affection for Daniel and he trusted that God would protect him and God did. But the king still had the authority to treat him as a slave.
So, you know, whatever people wanna say about Daniel, I want you to understand that in the king’s mind, there was no, there was no issue. I don’t care whether you’re Greek or Jew. I don’t care whether you’re circumcised or you are uncircumcised. I don’t care what you identify as, what race, what gender, whatever you identify as, you are my slave to command. Right? Daniel was the king’s slave to command. When Jesus came and He died for us, He made us to be new creatures and what I read to you in the book of Colossians is that in Christ, our primary identity should be in Christ Who is in awe, not in what we identify with in the natural. Because some people will identify as, “I feel like I’m just a slave. I’m a servant. I feel like maybe I’ve got something going for me.” I don’t care whether you’re Greek and you feel like you guys have got all the philosophies of the world and you are the dominant people who brought mathematics to the world, philosophies to the world. I don’t care whether you’re Greek. I’m the king who dominates you, and you will do as I tell you. Right?
I’m wanting you to understand that Daniel, even though God used him mightily in the Babylonian system, he was still a slave. Most people, when they talk about Daniel, they want to talk about Daniel, you see and we have to, and it’s an appropriate point that every one of God’s children can be smarter, ten times smarter, than anybody else in the world system, because the Spirit of God is on you, because Christ is in you. And so on the one hand, we want to have that Spirit of Christ come upon us. We want that to be in us and we want to make those declarations that we have more wisdom, we have greater understanding, we have the authority of Christ, we have got all things going for us in Christ. So we want that positive declaration, don’t we?
On the other hand, we also want to say, “But I want to choose what I want to do and how I want to use that wisdom.” Daniel didn’t have that choice. God gave him the wisdom and He gave him the choice because God wanted to preserve the children of Israel and He needed a people in a slave environment that could protect the people. Hey? And so as long as the Babylonian empire continued to exist, God had a people that would take care of His enslaved people. I hope I’m making myself clear. The reason why the children of Israel were enslaved by the Babylonian empire is because they had disobeyed God. And so God allowed a corrupt king, a king who was a gentile king, a king who had nothing to do with Jehovah God, He allowed them to be taken captive by that king because they refused as a nation to obey God.
So, there are a few lessons that we can learn here. The one lesson for sure is if we don’t obey God, it doesn’t matter how wise or how smart we are, Babylonian system, the world system, can capture you. It can capture you. So even though you’re sitting and we are part of a church where we understand and we have taught significantly about the Babylonian system. We’ve called it different things over a long period of time, but we have taught about the Babylonian system and we as a people have been taken by God where He has taken our children, He’s taken the families. He’s taken us as a people and He’s called us to Himself, and we have crossed over into a new place and position with God. You understand that if we disobey God, we can still be captured. Yes. It doesn’t make us immune from being captured. Let me tell you, that world system out there is so strong. It is so powerful. It needs a mighty God to keep you and prevent you from being captured by that system. And it’s a relentless system that is after you night and day. Every week, every month, every year. It’s a relentless system. It will want to capture everybody that it can capture.
How? Come on. Have a conversation with me here. A metaphorical conversation if you like. Let’s have a conversation right now about how the world will capture us. How’s the world trying to capture us right now? How is it after us right now? How is it after us? Is it not after us with social media? Is it not after us with entertainment? Is it not after us with finances? Is it not after us with bad eating and bad food? Hey? Is it not after us with freedom of relationship have any kind of relationship with any kind of person, any way you want? Have as much of it as you want, as immoral as you want it, have as much as you want because it’s your right. Is the world not after us to capture us that way?
So the world is after us to capture us through governments who want to put in the constitutions that abortion and all manner of all kinds of immoral behaviour are legal. So even churches today, even though we may make a spiritual stand against some of these things, the governments have declared them to be morally acceptable as a government. Right? So if we are the church and we are the people of God, we are not immune to what the system is trying to do to capture us. We are not immune to that. It’s around us all the time, everywhere, every day. It’s trying to intrude into your world to try and capture you somewhere.
I’ve used this example before. You know, I mean, I’ve seen videos. Fortunately, it’s never happened to me, but I’ve seen videos of an elephant, you know, pushing over a vehicle. He does it with impunity. He has such strength that it doesn’t matter that the car weighs a ton, he just pushes the thing over. I’ll tell you what I have seen. I have seen an elephant push over a big solid tree that’s got deep roots. I’ve watched a big elephant stand against that tree, and he just keeps pushing and he keeps pushing and he keeps bringing his weight against it like this and he got his forehead against it and he keeps pushing at that tree and it starts to move and it starts to move and one of two things happen. It either comes up out of the roots or it breaks, it breaks the whole tree in half. This massive tree that’s been growing for years, years, he just brings his dominant strength and he just pushed it over.
That same element of elephant, you can convince him in his mind that you put a chain around his leg with a little spike in the ground and he will stand there and wait for you to come feed him. That same powerful wild elephant, you can capture him and hold him captive with a little chain on a little stake. And with all of his power and strength he could rip that thing up and walk away and chase you out and do whatever he wants, but he doesn’t believe it. Because he’s been captured by one little thing. He’s been captured. If we think that we are immune from capture, we have to think again. Right?
So, I don’t want you to make a list. This is not what I’m talking to you about. Wanting you to make a list of how the enemy has captured you. Because Christ in you has delivered you from the power of darkness. He has delivered you. And Jesus didn’t come to allow us to live in a state of having someone steal, kill and destroy us. He came to give us life and give us life more abundantly. But we got to trust Him, not us. So, don’t you think the biggest capture that the devil’s got, the biggest capture is getting you to believe that you are the most important person in your world, and that you are the only one who can make the right decisions for you? Can I tell you what is even more deceptive? This is even more deceptive of what the devil has done to the church. I pray, I read my Bible and I tithe, therefore, I am not captured by the devil. So I am pretty perfect, mind you, in the way that I’ve set my life up. It’s perfectly the way that I want it and I pretty much think that the Lord wants me to have this kind of life. So I think I’m pretty much certain that my life is pretty perfect. It’s pretty perfect in Him because He’s allowing me and He has kind of put the desire in me to have this kind of life. So, because I tithe and because I pray and spend time reading the Bible, my life is pretty perfect. Come on.
Remember what I spoke about a couple of weeks ago, that you, I want you to call me John “Change” Bendixen. I heard some people speaking on Message Moments. I think it was Bernice who stood up the first time, and she said, “I want to declare to you that my name is Bernice “Change” Delport. Didn’t you say that? (Bernice answers: it was Caitlin) Was it Caitlin? No? (Bernice answers she also declared it) Did you also declare it? Was it Catelin? As well. As well. Sorry if I got the names mixed up. It shows that I’m listening to Message Moments anyway.
You know, change. I want to change. So, what is the change that I’m needing to do? I’ve always got to be examining how my life is changing because God’s changing me. Not because I’m changing me, but because God’s changing me. Because if I change me, then all I’m doing is reinforcing my power over myself. And the more I reinforce the power over myself, the more I’m gonna be in a place where it’s harder for me to change out of the cycle of changing myself, because I believe myself more than I believe God. Come on.
Where do you think religion starts? Religion starts because people believe that they are perfectly in the will of God, doing what they’re doing and so they make a formula out of what they’re doing. So they completely believe in what they’re doing and it becomes a religion. Just keep doing this and this and this and this and then I will be this. That’s what religion says. Religion says, if you come and you sit in a booth and you make a confession to a priest and he says, “Go and pray like this fifty times or ten times, then you will be absolved from all of your sin.” It’s just a religion, and they believe that that kind of interaction can deliver them from their sin. It’s very convenient, isn’t it?
But if I even come to the Pentecostal Christians of the modern day world, the Pentecostal Christians, those that speak in tongues. You know, Pentecostal Christians, sometimes they believe in the process of speaking in tongues, that the very act of speaking in tongues will be the right thing that will deliver them. You know and this is partly what Pastor Sharon and I work really hard at. We continuously remind each other and we remind you that if you just go into the habit of speaking in tongues as a ritual, then the ritual is nothing more than a ritual. When you pray in Spirit and you pray in tongues, you’ve got to add faith to it. You’ve got to have a walk with God that the language that you’re speaking is the words of the Spirit, and I join my faith with those words of the Spirit so that it brings about what the language is that’s making it happen. Now I know that the Holy Spirit with my faith is making intercession on my behalf and speaking to the Father with things and murmurings and utterances that I don’t understand, but He understands, and He makes it come to pass in my life. It still takes faith. Hallelujah.
So I’m encouraging us, all of us today, that we don’t find ourselves smarter than everybody else, but we’re actually still in a captured system. What good does that do you and me and what good does that do the church? Amen. I thank God. I truly thank God that there are people in this ministry that God has given them gifts and they use the gifts to further the Kingdom of God that they have shifted as God’s brought revelation to them. They’ve shifted from using their gifts just for themselves and they’re using their gifts to further the Kingdom of God, because as they do that, the fullness of the joy of God becomes their strength and the fullness of being a person that is assigned and is aligned with their assignment and their gifts are being functional in the Body of Christ, the power of God is released in their life to do things that they are still yet to experience the fullness of, but already God has blessed them.
So, chapter 6 verse 1; 1 It pleased Darius, this is a new king, to set over the kingdom an hundred and twenty princes, which should be over the whole kingdom; 2 And over these three presidents; of whom Daniel was first: that the princes might give accounts unto them, and the king should have no damage. 3 Then this Daniel was preferred above the presidents and princes, because an excellent spirit was in him; and the king thought to set him over the whole realm (Daniel 6:1-3 KJV). So I, you know, what I’m sharing with you today is that even though the king recognised God in him and how smart God was through him and because there was a spirit of excellence in him and the king said, “I need someone to control all of my stuff so that no corruption comes to my stuff.” That word damage means no corruption. Right? So he set his trust in Daniel.
I want to remind you, Daniel is a Jew. The Jews were slaves. Daniel was still a slave, even though he was a commander, he was still a slave. But God positioned Daniel for His glory so that in the unique position that Daniel was, just hear me out, church. Just stick with me for a minute. In the unique position that Daniel was, he could hear what the king wanted. He observed all of the resources of the king and how the king was controlling his kingdom. Right? So that when Daniel went to pray and set himself to fast and to pray, to understand the will of God and to understand the visions and dreams that God gave him, he understood a kingdom mindset so that when God gave him visions and revelations about the seven weeks and the kingdoms of this earth and the kingdoms of this world, he was positioned to understand what it meant.
God was, even though he was a slave, God was saying, “I’m going to give you everything you need so that I can prophesy through you, Daniel. Your usefulness is not because of what you serve to do the king.” His usefulness was not in the status of second in command of the whole realm, answerable only to the king. His usefulness was not the status of it, the glory of it, the pomp of it, the power of it, because Daniel understood, “I’m still a slave.” The power of where God placed him, is that Daniel could understand how kingdoms work so when God gave him the vision of kingdoms to come and that the Kingdom of God would come through Jesus and the kingdom of David would rule forever through Jesus, he understood Kingdoms. He understood the power of resources. So when we hear Jesus speak in Matthew 6:33 and says, “Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness.” Daniel understood that the Kingdom means delegated authority, all of the resources, all of the power and when he prophesied about the end of the age, he understood the Kingdom understanding, even though he was a slave.
The powerful thing about Daniel is that Daniel was never captured in his heart. He was always a covenant man. He was always a covenant man. How do I know that? Because right at the beginning let me tell you, your beginnings are always very important. Right at the beginning, when he had a choice to eat the king’s food or eat to his covenant God’s food, he trusted God to go to the eunuch and say, “Give us our own food that we may eat our own food.” He was already put in God when he had no status, when he had no, he had everything to lose as a teenage boy or a young boy. He had everything to lose and yet he said, “I want you to give me the food that my God says, not what your god says.” What my God says. He chose to eat the food of His Heavenly Father, his Covenant God, before he chose to eat the powerful fruit of the power god. Hey?
So, you can tell, you can see, you can see the fruit of people that are eating the fruit of the power god, of the money god, of the self glorification god, the self exaltation god, the god that wants them to make decisions for their life about their life, to their own life, to their own selves. You can see people that eat that fruit versus people that are eating the Fruit of God. Hallelujah.
I’m wanting to read to you now from Corinthians. I’m going to read to you from the book of Corinthians. I’ve gotta change here. I didn’t get to talk about this at the men’s camp. I had it on my notes, but I didn’t get there, but first Corinthians chapter 12 verse 12. I’m reading from the New Living Translation. 12 The human body has many parts, but the many parts make up one whole body. So it is with the body of Christ. 13 Some of us our bodies, some of us are Jews, some of us are Gentiles, some are slaves, and some are free. But we have all been baptized into one body by one Spirit, and we all share the same Spirit and we all share the same Spirit. So again, the scripture is telling us, it doesn’t matter what your life position is, what status you are, what you identify as, you are all the same in Christ. We are all the same body. We are all the same people. We are in Christ the same. Right?
14 Yes, the body has many different parts, not just one part. 15 If the foot says, “I am not a part of the body because I am not a hand,” that does not make it any less a part of the body. 16 And if the ear says, “I am not part of the body because I am not an eye,” would that make it any less a part of the body? 17 If the whole body were an eye, how would you hear? Or if your whole body were an ear, how would you smell anything? 18 But our bodies have many parts, and God has put each part just where he wants it. 19 How strange a body would be if it had only one part! 20 Yes, there are many parts, but only one body. 21 The eye can never say to the hand, “I don’t need you.” The head can’t say to the feet, “I don’t need you.” Right? 22 In fact, some parts of the body that seem weakest and least important are actually the most necessary. 23And the parts we regard as less honorable are those we clothe with the greatest care. Yeah? I mean, it would be rather inappropriate if I showed up at church in a speedo, or some ladies come and preach on the pulpit in their bras or some kind of swimwear that was very revealing. What do we do? We take care to cover the most important parts – carefully. It’s not because they are less important or because they’re less significant, it’s because of their importance that they’re covered. So you don’t see them, we don’t see each other there, but we see each other’s eyes, we see each other’s head, and we have interaction with each other here. But you can’t walk around with this face and go and show your face without taking all of you with you.
So, 23 And the parts we regard as less honorable are those we clothe with the greatest care. So we carefully protect those parts that should not be seen, 24 while the more honorable parts do not require this special care, like our eyes and our face. So God has put the body together such that extra honor and care are given to those parts that have less dignity. 25 This makes for harmony among the members, so that all the members care for each other (1 Corinthians 12:12-25 NLT).
Hey, so, if we have people in the church, first point I want to remind ourselves of is it doesn’t matter the people that we have in the church, if some people have a less, have an unfortunate financial upbringing, where they have great poverty in their lives. They receive Jesus into their heart. They come and they are part of our church. Does that make them less than us? No. We are the same in Christ. What about someone that earns a great deal of money, that has a great deal of assets, a great deal of stuff, and can pretty much do whatever they want? Does that make them greater than us? No. They are the same in Christ. So, it doesn’t matter.
Let me tell you, this was an amazing thing that my dad taught me, and he was appointed to the Assemblies of God National Executive Committee because of the way that he, in the apartheid years, the way that he took great risks to actually have relationships with black people. Because those days, if you don’t remember anything about the apartheid days, you will remember that they had signs all over the place, whites only, not accessible to non-whites. My dad, he would often use this scripture, and he would say to me, “John, the colour of pigmentation has nothing to do with anybody in Christ Jesus. Christ is the same in him as he is in me. Therefore, he has as much honour in my life as anybody has with a different colour skin.”
You know, those days, there was quite a lot of hatred that was around based on colour. My dad, thank God for it, my dad never had that in his heart. Praise the Lord. My Ouma did, but my dad didn’t and I thank God that Sharon was raised the same by her dad because he had nothing in his heart in those years either. He went out of his way to look after people that were impoverished because of their skin colour. Thank God for that. That in this house, we have a legacy through us anyway for that. Hallelujah. That we don’t have that in our hearts. Never have had it in our hearts. Praise Jesus. Glory to God.
Where’s Ernest? Is he somewhere else? He’s with the kids. He’s looking after the kids. Well, I mean, that’s how Ernest came into our lives, because we found him and his brother who’s gone on to be in heaven now, but him and his brother, they were on the streets and they had nowhere to go and no place, anything, and we adopted them. Not legally, but we adopted them as our kids. I don’t know how old Ernest and Patrick were? Seven and five, somewhere around about there. We started taking care of them with our …. we didn’t go to the church and say to the church, “Hey, we found some kids on the street. Can you please take care of them? Can we put them in the orphanage?” Here’s my Ernest. Come here, Ernest. This is my Ernest. Hallelujah. He’s my son. Because he’s lived with us in our house and he’s been a son to us just about all your life, neh? Except for the first couple of years.
Ernest: Yes. But now I’m 44 and married.
Pastor John: Yes. So. it’s about 38 years you’ve been with me almost, ne?
Ernest: Yes. Yeah.
Pastor John: Praise the Lord. Hallelujah. He’s my son. That was, thank you, Ernest. [Ernest goes back to his seat] That was a bond that was formed because of the love of God, not for any other reason. Hallelujah. Praise Jesus. There’s no difference. It didn’t matter what Ernest had in his life and the lack of resources. When God showed us what our part was, his world changed and ever since that day to this day, Ernest and then when he met his wife, Emma and married Emma, they have never lacked for anything. Right, Ernest? Because from that day to this day, God made sure that whatever resources we had, we would take care of them. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Hallelujah.
I’m trying to show you that in the body of Christ, there is no difference. Whatever you want to call yourself, black or white, Indian, Asian, or coloured, whatever you are, whatever position you are, “I’m very educated.” “I’m not so educated.” “I have lots of money.” “I don’t have much money.” It doesn’t matter in Christ what you can identify as. We are all equal in Christ. We are equal.
So, what about these people that have more baggage when they come to Christ because of all kinds of stuff that they’ve had to deal with when they were small, or when they were teenagers, or when they were young adults or adults, and they’ve had lots of drama, trauma, major stuff in their lives, whereas somebody that hasn’t had that, is there any difference? [Congregation replies, “No.”] No. We are all the same in Christ. Therefore, when we look at each other, our only consideration is, “What part of the body are you?” What part of the body are you? Because now I don’t have to worry about what you do, what your status is. I have to say, “What’s your part in the body? Are you an eye? Are you a nose? Are you an ear? Are you a foot? Are you one of those that we have to cover up and people don’t see?” And typically, in a church, that might be people that have a powerful ability to have a mercy gift, for example, because sometimes in a mercy gift, you’re touching people in the most vulnerable parts of their life and so you got to cover those people and hide them until they are delivered. That’s not for everybody to see. You can’t take them and make them the eyes. Hallelujah.
So, the important thing is no longer what your status is in life, but it’s what you are in the body. What’s your position in the body? What’s God putting you in the body of Christ to do? I’ll tell you, when Jesus came to die for you and me, He never called us to be in the church so that we could live separately from the church, from every other day, and every other time, except for the few moments that we give to God in the church. He didn’t call us to be separated from the church, because the church meets in buildings. He called us to be actively part of the church and for our gifts to be part of the church. Our body members, if you like, our functional things that we do needs to be in the church and part of the church.
When Pastor Justin spoke about legacy last week, this is the legacy. Hey? Thank God that when God put me with Brother Jerry, I went into Brother Jerry’s world with this revelation – it’s obvious that if God has called me to Brother Jerry, then there’s a cooperative function that he can do and that I must do, and together, God has called us to do what His will is. This is not about he’s the boss and I’m now junior to him, and so I’ve always got to have a problem that he’s the boss and I’m junior. God called him to be, in our case, the senior apostle, and so I always took my lead from him and because I honoured him, his honour was back to me for the role that he saw me play. Come on. So then God called us together to do things together, not because there’s a competition. I’ll tell you what, if you want to know, I think that if you could say, probably, I’m just using this as an example, Brother Jerry, maybe he was the mouth and maybe God called me to be the ears. Hello? Because we were very close to each other. Our functions were very similar. We both had to cooperate with each other to get the message out. Right?
So, that’s why I asked them to do this fingerprint for our background today because every one of us is unique. Every one of us is completely identified uniquely in Christ Jesus. But we are one body and it’s the fingerprint of Jesus. It’s the fingerprint of Jesus that is in our lives. So every one of you are unique, not one of us can do what you can do. Not one of us. I mean, I can’t do what Pastor Christi can do. I mean, you know, for one, she thinks like a girl, and I think like a guy. Our gifts as pastors have very similar ways of operating, but that’s probably because, just like Brother Jerry and I were very similar in operating, there was a very close similarity. But I’m not looking for similarities in the body because there’s got to be people that are very different to me. So I’m glad that Pastor Sharon is in the church because she’s very different to me. How many of you know that we need a Pastor Sharon in the church? Otherwise, we don’t function as a proper Body. Right? Thank You, Jesus. So, you know, when I came out of our … I’m nearly finished. But you guys are getting, this is good today. Right? You’re getting good stuff out of this today. You know, when I was in my dad’s church and I was a PK, pastor’s kid, I played the guitar, sang songs, and I preached whenever I could preach. You know, I was the preacher’s kid.
So I thought, I thought, when I joined and my dad went to New Zealand and I went to the army, and when I came out, I met this amazing girl, and then we found ourselves in a place where we needed to find a church. So, I found my church at Rhema. So, I thought I was something. I’m one of very few people that has the knowledge and the background of Pentecostalism, and I know, I speak in tongues from I was seven. I know how to pray for people, I know how to preach and I can sing, I can play an instrument, I can do a whole bunch of stuff. I’m quite something. Rhema is very blessed to have me. I did. I thought like that. I used to go into the church and I used to look at the ushers and people serving in the car park, and I’d say, “You know, thank God that they’re going to work for me when I’m a pastor in this church one day.” I’m now all of 23 years old and I’m windgat. Come on. Don’t look at me like you don’t have those thoughts about yourself, even if they’re in private. I’m just mad enough to come and tell you my thoughts publicly. Vulnerable enough to tell you that, you know, because I don’t care what people think about me anymore. But I thought I was going to be, you know, Pastor Ray’s just waiting to look for me because just like my dad would give me chances to preach, I can’t wait. He’s going to see my calling quickly. He’s going to come and tell me to take over the pulpit and preach a lot.
So I’m in and out of the church, and I’m in and out of the church and I said, “Lord, when when’s this all going to happen?” And He says, “Shut up and listen.” He told me, I didn’t know it was going to be three years, He said, “Shut up and listen until I tell you it’s over.” And for three years, I had to go in and out of church with this great anointing, calling, preaching gift, waiting to be unleashed on the church. The Lord said, “Shut up and listen. There’s stuff you have to learn. There’s things you’ve got to see, and you won’t be able to see it if you’re all full of yourself all of the time.” So then I began to see some things. I began to see those men and those people that were coming an hour, two hours before church service, and they were opening up the church and they were making things, and I began to see these men, and I began to see the gift of God that was operating in them and the sacrifice that they were making, and I began to see how God was blessing them and anointing them for the service that they were providing to the church.
So as God opened my eyes to see that, my heart leaped. Every time I would see an usher, it was like I was drawn to these people that were serving in the church. It was like I couldn’t stop talking to them. I wanted to find out how they are. “What’s your name? What are you doing here? Where’d you come from?” And then I found out some of these guys were top businessmen. They were wealthy, but they were serving because that’s what God called them to do. Before I knew it, God said, “John, you can do more in the church, now become an usher.” I said, “Yes, Sir. I know I’m going to be called to more or more eye ministry, more mouth ministry, but You know what? I’m very happy, Lord.” He put it in my heart to such a point where I couldn’t wait to go usher. Then sometimes they would give us weekends off so we could come in with our family, you know, and it was like, “Oh, no. I got a weekend off.” I want to go be there in the prayer room with those guys praying for the Pastor all the ushers together, that the power of God would be released into the church service. And if possible, He would use our hands as we’re ushering somebody to their seat, that God would use just the touch of our hands or the direction to bring the anointing across to the people.
From that day to this, I just have a joy for …. I tell you what, I know another Pastor that sees the gifts the way I see them, and you know, he didn’t teach me. But when I heard him, he put some substance to it for me, but that was Doctor Mark Barclay. I heard him talk. I saw him have in ministers conferences, have all the ushers from the car park and everybody that was ushering and helping in a minister’s conference at Kenneth Copeland Ministries. He would call them all into the service and he would have them stand at the back there, and he would thank them, and he would bless them and he would honour them in the service because of what they had done.
Let me tell you, all of us are of the same body. There’s not one of us that does something in the church that is less than someone else. I’ll tell you what, if you think great stuff about yourself, maybe what you should do is just say, “I’m gonna usher for a year or I’m gonna go and look after the kids in the back there for a six months.” Go and find out what humility those kids bring to you as an adult if you think you’re great and see that the only way you can serve those kids is by getting onto your hands and knees and being where they are at. Jesus and that’s what happened to the disciples. They said to Jesus, “Hey no, no, stay away, the kids. This is an important Man. Keep the kids away.” And Jesus says, “Suffer not. Don’t prevent the kids from coming to Me because this is the Kingdom of heaven. When little children like this can come into Me.” Hallelujah.
So, Pastor John, “Why this message this morning?” For two reasons. As we go into things and in our crossover where God is going to cause our ministry to be doing more things. We’re gonna be showing you some stuff about gifts and where you fit and where your body part belongs. Because if you know where your body part belongs and you’re saying, “Lord, I wanna do.” You know, I marvel at how God trained me because He said, “Okay, John, be an usher.” Then He said, “Alright, John, you can be a home cell leader.” Then He said, “Okay, John, promoted. You can run many home cells, and you can do this.” And then I ran the Rhema business people’s fellowship and I did the Rhema business people’s prayer meetings on a Tuesday morning. And all the while, God was training me. He said, “John, I want to show you what a servant in these parts of the church looks like. I want to show you how people will serve the Body of Christ in different areas, in different ways, through different things. All their lives, God is going to call them to do these kinds of things.” Hallelujah.
Then when we come together as a body and you come on a Message Moments on a Sunday afternoon and you come and bring your way that you interpret the message, you might be coming to interpret the message to us the way a foot does. Your language might be very different to somebody who brings the language of an eye. But we need you to interpret what God’s doing in your life through the message as a foot. Because if we don’t hear from the foot, then we just take the foot for granted. One day, we say, “What happened to our feet?” And you become immobilised because you can’t move because you’ve taken things for granted. You’re not giving people an opportunity to share, to see, to be the things that God wants them to be. Amen. I’ve run out of time. Hallelujah. Praise Jesus.
One thing is for sure, we have the Kingdom of God in us, and we are the Body of Christ, and we are most suited to live in this world as a powerful organism, as the Body of Christ, and to change everything that’s in the world around us because we are the Body of Christ. Hallelujah. Praise Jesus. Amen. Glory to God. Won’t you all stand with me, please? Did you get something out of this today? Hallelujah. Hallelujah.
So, just by the way, I just want to share with you that there’s not one person in this auditorium who doesn’t have a great opportunity at this time of our crossover as a church, as an Ecclessia. You have the moment right now to step into the body function that God has called you to be. There’s no baggage, no past, no history, no anything that should prevent you from being what God has called you to be. Hallelujah. This is the moment where God is saying, “Come on. Let’s move. Let’s move. Let’s do some things.” Glory to Jesus. Hallelujah.
Won’t you take your hand and put it on your chest and just say, “Jesus, I thank You that I am Your body. I am Your servant on the earth, I will do what You ask me to do. Because I am a child of God and I am a bondservant of the most High God. It’s why I call You, Lord.” [Congregation repeats after Pastor John] Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Let me tell you, this is a great prayer to pray. This is a great prayer to pray; it’s why I call You, “Lord.” Because You live in me and I want to be used by You. Praise Jesus. Praise Jesus. Hallelujah. Praise Jesus. Praise Jesus. Praise You, Jesus. Praise You, Jesus. Praise You, Jesus.
I declare that shalom is upon you. There is nothing missing in your life. There is nothing broken in your life. I declare that the Holy Spirit reveals Himself to you through these messages and through your own time that you are in the Word and you are in prayer. I declare that the Holy Spirit reveals Himself to you. And He makes all things about your life clear to you about what you do in the Body. Amen.
I want you to agree with me that you are blessed going out and you’re blessed coming in. And out of your houses, you are blessed going out and blessed coming in. No weapon formed against you will prosper. He gives His angels charge over all of us and protects us and no harm will come near our dwelling place, no harm will come near you, no harm will come near your place of business. You are protected; your income, your health, your life. You are protected by Jesus, His Word, His Blood that He shed for us and who we are in Christ, He protects us and shields us because we give the angels charge over us to do that for us by our confession and by our trust in the Most High God. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Glory to Jesus.
And I pray that all prosperity that God has for you will come upon you in relationships, in finances, in health, in every way. I pray that your soul prospers and you live in health. That you will prosper and be in health even as your soul prospers and that the shalom of God is causing your soul to prosper. In Jesus’ name. Hallelujah. Glory to God.
I declare and I speak by faith in the name of Jesus that there is a great spirit of joy that rises up inside of you, a great wisdom of God rising up inside of you, a great ability to understand the signs of the times and that you will make use of the opportunities that come your way that no one else can see, but God will show you and you will see it by the Spirit and you will have boldness on it and you will act on it and God will show you signs and wonders in your life because you are children of the Most High God, because you are the Body of Christ. And He Himself is the One who wants to bless you and increase you and make His face shine upon you and make His peace come upon you in every way, in Jesus’ name! Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Glory to Jesus. Glory to Jesus. Praise the Lord.
Well, how about that. The Spirit of God just took over my mouth right there and then. Whoo! Glory to Jesus. Sommer gave me a life injection as I was declaring it. Hallelujah. I take that all for me, too. Praise the Lord. Well, we’ll see you at Message Moments this afternoon. Be blessed, y’all. Okay, bye.
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