Scripture reference: Romans 5:10 (AMPC); Colossians 3:1-4 (TPT); 2 Corinthians 4:7-18 (TPT)
Pastor Sharon:
I’m just going to be sharing something with you. So, Pastor John is ministering this morning, but I have an encouragement for you this morning, an admonition too from the Lord, an exhortation from the Lord for this month of November.
He just spoke to me this morning in my time that this month of November, this is what He asked me to tell you, to tell me, to tell us; Be awake. Be alert. The Lord, by His Spirit, is ramping up spiritual, heavenly things in this month. He is imparting key, vital, most important revelations now, to come to hearts, to those who have ears to hear.
On Tuesdays this month we will be teaching about the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ, we will be teaching about the Ecclesia and what the word ‘church’ means. It means those that are called out by God to rule and to govern and to reign. It’s not what the majority of the Body of Christ think it is; it’s just a place where you go on Sunday to sing songs and maybe hear a good teaching. It’s actually Jesus Christ that birthed the Church, that through the Church the manifold wisdom of God is going to be known to principalities and powers. When Jesus said, “I will build My Church,” He was saying, “I will build My Ecclesia.” The Greek word is; I will build My Church with those that are under authority, those that can be in authority, those that are walking in My ways, those that are planted in My house, those that are walking in My ways.
All the Lord is saying is He wants to impart some things to you that you don’t know about. You don’t know about… You shouldn’t even want to just be interested. You should actually just be awake now and be listening.
So, on Tuesdays, we will be talking about Ecclesia, Church and Ancient Paths and why your place in a prayer meeting is so important. A Sunday morning is a place of assembly and the purpose of a Sunday morning assembly, in this house, is for Sound and Song, for us to minister to the Lord and He ministers to us, and then to receive the message from the Lord—that is the plan and purpose of this Sunday morning meeting. Then there is another assembly and another church meeting which is not less important than the Sunday morning, it’s as important. In fact, the revivalist Charles Finney says it’s the most important meeting of a church to which to assemble.
So, through the traditions of men, your thinking has become clouded where you think; if I come to an assembly once a week on a Sunday morning, it doesn’t matter that Jesus might be calling me to come to pray, because to come to pray is where we speak to God and we legislate on behalf of God and we ask Him for things and it’s that purpose of that assembly. When the Word of God says do not neglect the assembly of yourselves together, it’s the assembly of all meetings that God wants to have. Glory to God.
Then, in the mornings, Pastor John has asked me, when we were usually having Morning Moments he has asked me to do Songs of Psalms, which I was going to do on a Sunday morning, but he’s asked me, instead, to do it every morning until I’m finished. I’m going to be instructing and teaching you about every single Psalm that we are singing at this time. That’s going to open you up to be able to receive what the purpose of these Songs of Psalms are.
I think that’s all I’m going to say. That’s all I’m going to say. Amen.
Pastor John:
Praise the Lord. Hallelujah. I just want to make it clear that we teach on a Tuesday, but we will only be showing what we teach on Tuesday on Thursday evening. It’s in the online Bible School, if you go to YouTube, you won’t see it. You need to go to the website and register. When you register, you can watch the online Bible School. This last course that we’re doing for this year we are going to be teaching on the Ecclesia, ancient paths and the significance of relationships and how all of those things come together. Divine alignments, divine assignments, Ecclesia, ancient paths and all of those things. Tuesday night is a live Prayer Connect Group here in the auditorium and online Bible School will continue on Wednesday night with Leadership Development and Thursday night on the subject that Pastor Sharon has just mentioned. Praise the Lord.
I’m going to read a few scriptures to you, just one or two scriptures, and then I will be teaching on the resurrection power of God or the Power of Resurrection. By the way, good morning. How are you all doing? Are you doing good? You’re looking all fine and radiant and smiley, for those of you who don’t have masks on. I’m sure those of you who do have masks on, you’re smiling behind your mask. Hallelujah. Praise the Lord.
I’m going to read Romans chapter 5 verse 10, 10 For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son. I taught last week, if you were a Gentile, you had no way of becoming connected to Jehovah God, the living God, you had to take on the Jewish customs and the Jewish traditions. It is much more [certain], now that we are reconciled, that we shall be saved meaning (daily delivered from sin’s dominion) through His [resurrection] life. (Romans 5:10 AMPC) So, everything that we’re going to have victory over in our lives is going to come through His resurrection life.
I read to you Colossians chapter 3 verses 1 to 4 out of The Passion Translation. 1 Christ’s resurrection is your resurrection too. This is why we are to yearn for all that is above, for that’s where Christ sits enthroned at the place of all power, honor, and authority! 2 Yes, feast on all the treasures of the heavenly realm and fill your thoughts with heavenly realities, and not with the distractions of the natural realm. 3 Your crucifixion with Christ has severed the tie to this life, and now your true life is hidden away in God in Christ. 4 And as Christ himself is seen for who he really is, who you really are will also be revealed, for you are now one with him in his glory! (Colossians 3:1-4 TPT) This is a particularly powerful passage of scripture, for me anyway, because this is really talking about what God has given us because if you receive Jesus as your Lord and Saviour, you have to accept that He was crucified. If you accept that He was crucified, then you have to accept that He was raised from the dead.
So, there’s something that happened, in between His death and His resurrection. The something that happened was that the power of God was legally able to and was exercised to raise and change the death pattern of human beings forever. This is an amazing thing that through the death of Jesus, you have to accept that He was crucified, and His resurrection. This amazing thing happened where the power of God was legally able to raise Him from the dead. Praise the Lord.
So, I’m going to talk to you for a few minutes about what happened to Adam and Eve, and what’s happening to us every day. So, when you leave church, and you get up tomorrow morning, I’m going to just walk through, what I would think is a typical day, of a typical person. Okay, yours might vary a little bit, but I’m not here to scrutinize your daily habits. Typically, if you would wake up in the morning, you would, depending on if you have a devotion time or not, but still, you would wake up and you would probably put some clothes on, maybe you would brush your teeth, wake yourself up a little bit and then maybe you would have a devotion time, maybe that’s not on your scope of what to do. From there, you would probably do some activities around the house, like maybe prepare breakfast, or maybe do some things. You then might dress more formally to go to work, after you’ve, for girls’ makeup and hairspray, or whatever else you do in casual clothes, you know, you might put on a different set of clothes.
For men, it just depends on how you dress for work. If you were dressed in a suit or something, you might be more casually dressed while you go about getting yourself ready to go to work and then the point comes where it’s time to go to work or go to wherever you have to go and get in the car and you don’t even think about it, you start the car, you reverse the car out of the garage, or whatever your situation might be and your car drives probably on automatic pilot to your place of work because you already know where you’re going. You don’t have to think about it much, you just know where you’re going. You will be in the process of probably, thought wise projecting yourself into your day. What does my day look like? What are the important priorities, you might have something written, might have something on your phone or on some other computer source, but what are the things that I must do today?
Then you will probably find yourself during the day, having a few breaks from what work that you do. You’d have a body break and you’d probably have a coffee break, you might have a lunch break or something like that. Then your day will continue to just keep going through responsibilities, phone calls, people you have to connect with, whatever your circumstances are. And then it will come to the end of the official time of work time. Some people’s official time doesn’t end when it’s officially time to go home. Sometimes they continue to work later. Or sometimes they take their work home with them. They might get home, change out of work clothes, maybe put on casual clothes, maybe have something to eat, and maybe have a shower first, maybe have something to eat and then maybe go back to work or maybe take some chill time. Typical day.
You might have phone calls from children, you might have phone calls to parents, you might have some things that are going on in your life, but those are typical. Fairly, typical kind of days. If you’re a bit younger, you might be at school or at college. If you’re a bit older that would describe something of your typical day. Yes?
My question to you is: What kind of day is that? It’s a very human day. Right? It’s all about what you do to your physical body, what your physical body has to do to earn a living or to achieve things and it’s very typical of you expending energy, you’re getting to the end of your day, and then have to replenish your energy, meaning sleep. So, we eat, we drink, we sleep and we work. We might engage in some relationships, almost certainly along the way. That’s a very human thing.
So, what has God got to do with this? What’s God got to do with your human day? I just read you the scripture about His crucifixion and His resurrection and how His resurrection power works in us. So, what is it that your normal day has got to do with God? The answer is: Depends on how much you trust God. If you’re born again, that means you have believed in His death. It also means you’ve been resurrected. You believe in His resurrection. If you believe in His death and His resurrection, there is an extraordinary thing that has happened to you because when you made a decision, to make Jesus the Lord and Savior of your life, this extraordinary thing that happened inside of you, was a new life. The Bible doesn’t just call it a new beginning, the Bible calls it a whole new creature. The old things have passed away, behold, all things have become new. I am now no longer the old creature, I am a whole new creature.
If I’m such a new creature, how is it that I still have to get up and brush my teeth? Well, because the new creature that happened in you, didn’t affect your body. The new creature that happened in you, affected your spirit. When Jesus came to live in your spirit, your spirit became alive to God and because of that, you will never, ever taste death. Like I told you before if my body was to just stop working here, and everybody got upset that I’m lying on the floor here, my spirit man would be standing with my soul, looking into heaven, probably into the heavenly realms, and I would see God, and God would welcome me into His presence. Because I’m His child, not because my body is saved, but because my spirit man and my soul are saved, and are going to go to heaven.
So, what is it that we do here every Sunday? And or during the week? What is it that we do here that’s important for you? Well, it’s important for you what we do here, because if we are listening to what God is telling us to tell you. The words that we speak are spirit and life, and so those spirit and life words, talk to which one of you, the brush the teeth person or the spirit person? Hello. The spirit person. This is an important distinction for us that whatever you want your future to look like, is not going to come from your brushing teeth in the morning person. Your future is going to look like what’s happening on the inside of you, in your spirit man. So our job is to bring you messages that feed and give life, spirit and truth words to the inside man.
If all we do is, appeal to your sense of inspiration or your sense of feeling comfortable in church, then we’ve missed the mark. Because what we have got to do is help you understand that what happens in your natural day is a natural activity that must get done to keep your body working while it’s on the earth, but the real development is what’s happening on the inside. We spend a lot of time working on everything that connects to our physical bodies. We spend a lot of time buying houses because it connects to our physical bodies. Spend a lot of time buying cars or going to work and earning money so that we can eat, sleep and go to work again the next day. We spend a lot of time doing that, but how does that fit into your resurrected life?
If you recall, it is my mandate by God, and I say this to you, every now and again, but it is my mandate to God wherever I go, the Lord told me He said, “Wherever you go in the world, and whatever you do on digital format, TV whatever you do, continue to make this statement. “What’s the point of being a Christian?” What’s the point of being a Christian? So, the point of being a Christian is definitely to stop you from going to hell and to go to heaven. We are clear on that? Right? Better to go to heaven and go to hell. So, for those people who teach, that you must be saved, so you can miss hell and make heaven your home. It fundamentally means you already believe in hell and heaven. Then, if you do, do that, then you’re a heartbeat away anyway, from accepting Jesus as Lord and Savior because surely you don’t want to go to hell.
That’s why I don’t, you won’t hear me preach that you should be saved, to avoid hell. You will hear me preach; you should be saved because Jesus saved you, from yourself and from yourself oriented future, where you only create a future for yourself, by yourself with yourself for yourself. He saved you from yourself. If He saved you from yourself, by definition, that means you’re saved to go to heaven, because if you saved from yourself, then you saved to the self, that is God. I don’t want to call God ‘a self,’ but if you’re, I’m trying to make a point to you. You’re saved from yourself, your own will, your own desires, your own commitment and dedication to making your plans come true and meeting every desire of your life and God saves you from that so that you can see the glory that is in Christ Jesus that He’s given us because He wants you to live with that.
How do I go about living my life, and still having houses and having cars and all of that? Well, that’s where, what we have to do is to show you that the truth of the Word of God, in your spirit man has more power to make those things happen than your intelligence, your connections, your education, your skill, whatever it might be, the power of God is stronger. It’s more alive, it’s got more power than the natural man that is you, but everybody’s on a frantic journey. We are on a frantic journey from the time that you are in high school. Maybe even before that you’re on this frantic journey, got to get the highest marks we can get at school, then you’ve got to go to university or go and get some other education.
We are in this frantic race against our time that is our body. We are in this frantic race to accumulate as much elevated self, accumulated wealth and all of the things that will happen to us; self-achievement, self-status, whatever you want to call it. We’re on this frantic push to get as much of that as we can because the world says that by the time you get to sixty you should already have accumulated so much wealth and you’ve already done so much with your life that you can retire because that’s when people should retire. Then when you retire, then you can do what you wanted to do because all the years you were on a frantic lifestyle spinning wheel to get as much done as you can. Huh.
So then, what did Jesus save us from? Come on now, what did Jesus save us from? If He saved you from yourself, then He saved you from that frantic need to get it done by yourself. He gave you the resurrected power inside of you so that power can come out everywhere you go. Now you no longer have to depend on your human self, you can depend on the resurrected life of Christ that is in you to get what is needed. Hallelujah.
Alright, I’ll have to use a practical example. When COVID hit the country, first time round. The president of our nation made a declaration, and he said, “The Command Council, the Coronavirus Command Council has decided and dictated that we will lock down our entire country.” I don’t know, I think the original term was three weeks, was it? Three weeks. Everybody’s to stay home for three weeks. You can’t even go outside of your garden. Remember that?
I mean, I don’t know all the stats, but worldwide, the pollution levels dropped by the most incredible things. I don’t know if you remember that, but I’d wake up in the morning, and you could still see stars, you know, and suddenly the smog was gone. Everything was gone because the economy came to a standstill, people weren’t driving. Only essential services were permitted. Right?
Disobeying that law came with a penalty, and it was next-door neighbours, if they saw you doing something that you shouldn’t be doing, they were ‘klikbek’, you know [Congregation laughing]. They’d gossip and go and phone the police or find someone else and come and say, “You know these people, they’ve got visitors from family, come and sort them out.” So, that came with a penalty. It means you were forced, you were forced to control your body, you were forced to control your body and confine it to a very small space. Right?
You were forced to contain your body in a very small space, depending on how many footprints you had to live in, but just generally, if you’re only confined to your home, you were forced to be confined to your home, you were forced to do that. The reason Jesus died for us, is because before Jesus came, your body had desires, your body had needs, to survive and to stay alive. What Jesus came to do to say, “You are forced to live life, the way that your body and your environment dictates that you should live life.” Jesus came and He said, “I am going to die, and the Father is going to raise Me from the dead and even though you now have to live in the body, you are no longer confined in your life by what your body can do.” Which includes your brain. “I release you from confinement into the liberty of a great and glorious economy.”
When COVID came and everything started opening up, the talk was the economy can’t stand too much of this. Yes? People’s mental health can’t stand too much of this. Family matters couldn’t stand too much of this because most families are not used to and were not used to spending twenty-four hours a day with each other for three weeks. I wonder how many wars were had in the name of COVID behind closed doors and walls. I wonder, unfortunately, how many abuses occurred. Very unfortunate. Children had to suffer. When the economy started opening up and movement began to happen. Do you all remember that sense of freedom? It’s like, “Wow, things are a bit… you know, we’re going places.” As it opened up more and more, and now we’re on lockdown level one, adjusted, whatever that means.
But for the most part, if you walk around, I mean, yesterday we did a bicycle ride here, it was a thousand people, I mean, a thousand people, like in the starting gate, a couple of batches of people, when we got there, we looked at everybody and nobody’s wearing a mask. Nobody’s wearing a mask. Here and there you would find someone that would wear a mask. It’s like people are saying, “Enough, enough.” I’m not downing anybody that is wearing a mask. I’m just saying, when I look at, even in this auditorium today, ninety-five per cent of the people are not wearing a mask. I’m just saying, we all got fed up with the restrictions.
I’m trying to teach you something here. We got fed up with the restrictions, and so we said, “Thank God, we can be free and move around a little bit.” Well, here’s the thing, without Jesus Christ, you were forced to give in to the desires, and the very human nature you were born with and all of the stuff that comes along with having to make money, having to buy houses, having to make and get food, having to do all those, because your body demanded it by your own self.
When Jesus came to die and became resurrected, He said: “I liberate you from the confinement of yourself. Let the resurrected life of Christ drive your decision making for your future, because when you do that everything that you now decide on; God’s power rests on it. Now you are no longer limited to your skill, your time, your energy, your stuff; because the resurrection power of Christ is released from your inner-man into your world. You are released from confinement.
So, why on earth would you want to be confined again and try and identify yourself with everybody else in the world who is wanting to try and show how good they can accumulate stuff, or how great the education is they can get, or what political powers they can be connected to because all of that stuff is still in confinement. Unless the resurrected power of Christ is driving you to do that. That’s a completely different subject; it’s part of what Pastor Sharon and I are going to teach on, that you can look at on a Thursday night because that’s all about the glory of God.
Please remember, please remember, I have to keep getting back to the basics. What’s the point of being a Christian? I’m glad you’re not going to hell, I’m glad you’re going to heaven, but the point of being a Christian is not about that, it’s so that you can become spiritual. The point of becoming a Christian is to become spiritual, not to stay average and normal. Because average and normal confines you to average and normal. I don’t care, I don’t care whether it’s Anton Rupert, or whether it’s Richard Branson. I don’t care how much money they have, if they have no Jesus in their life, they are confined to average and normal. Because when they die, their accumulation of wealth stays here, and they go where? Their money then means what? And their reputation? Oh, people might speak about them for years and years about things that they did, but do you want to live your life in confinement, because other peoples’ models of success now must become your model for success? Why don’t you allow the model of success that God wants for your life to be your driving force? That model can’t fail, it doesn’t matter what happens to the world around you.
So, by the way, that is a model that takes away performance, it takes away comparison, and it takes away [hitting chest] “I achieved.” And it takes away all the limitations that “I achieved” can do. I don’t have to compete. I don’t have to compare. I don’t have to be in a place where I’ve got to even be full of anxiety or worry about this; because the resurrected life of Christ is driving my future.
That’s why I read to you that, Christ’s resurrection is your resurrection. Why is it important that we recognise that He was resurrected and that His resurrection is our resurrection? Because when Jesus was resurrected, He was delivered from the natural body, and He was raised again into a heavenly body. So, while Jesus was on the earth He was restricted to the body, but He was never restricted to what the body made Him restricted. “How do you know that Pastor John?” Well, you go and try and walk on the water… Come on, the natural body that was Jesus was tapping into the power of God that was going to resurrect Him from the dead, and because He did that He could walk on the water in the order and the time of God. He could walk on water and all the natural laws did not apply to Him because the power of God that was to raise Him from the dead was already working in His natural body.
You try and turn water into wine. Come on, I mean if you could do that you would probably open up, I don’t know, a winery or something, you know? [Gesturing] “Let’s lay hands on this bottle” and suddenly seven years of grapes and you know, whatever. I’m just trying to say that the natural laws that were His body, that He was confined to; to say “I have to go work, I have to do this and I’ve got to do that to look after this…”, He was released from the confinement of His body and He was able to do the will of the Father in everything that He did and when He did that everything was there for Him.
So, if Christ’s resurrection is your resurrection, then what have you got that Jesus got? Same release from the dominion of your body and everything your body needs in your world. Why would you want to solve your problems in the world when you can let the resurrection power of God solve them? Because, whatever problem you want to solve, you don’t have enough intelligence to fix it. Because you can’t predict human behaviour, you can’t predict even your own children’s natural responses and behaviour. You think your child is going to grow up and behave a certain way and you hope that they do, and then you find out they make different choices to the choices you would make and you thought you had everything under control. The resurrection power of Christ can take care of that, but you can’t.
You want to say that you’re protected all the time because you’re careful in your thought process, you drive under the speed limit, you go here… You have got no control over somebody else’s driving habits. You might say, I don’t get into accidents, I don’t have any fines because I’m careful on the road, I’m watchful on the road, and then some drunkard comes and smashes into your car. Control that? You can’t. The resurrection power of Christ though, is always available to you that if a car comes and crashes into you, you walk out of there alive.
There is so much power in this resurrection life, it will sustain you. So, that’s why we’ve got to have this understanding, “What’s the point of being spiritual?” What’s the point of being Christian? To become spiritual. What’s the point of being spiritual? So, that you can bring what’s in heaven to earth. Normal Christians, Christians that behave normally like every other people in the world that don’t have Christ, or they just have a whole bunch of other Christians that all behave normally, they don’t do that. They could, if they were taught, and they could if the environment was created for them. They can live in such a manner where the resurrection life of God supersedes everything that happens in your life.
Normal Christians and normal people can’t bring heaven to earth. They can’t do it. They can’t do it. I don’t care how smart you are, you can’t do it. So, what are they trying to do, they’re trying to take earth to heaven. “We’re going to Mars, and then we’re going to Jupiter. And then we’re going to… technology’s eventually going to… and we’re going to find out what the galaxies are all about.” When they get up there, they’re going to find out that the God who made all the galaxies, was always available for them on the inside of them, and so as much as their technology’s available, they still can’t find God.
They don’t believe that, they still believe there’s some other life out there, somewhere in another galaxy, some other place because God has put eternity in the hearts of us all and they need to believe that there is some other reason why we are here. So, they make their own reasons and their own purposes for why we are here. You can say this, “You’re preaching good today, Pastor John.” You can say, ”Amen” to that. You can say, “Praise the Lord.” Hallelujah.
So, yes, 2We must fill our thoughts with heavenly realities, and not with the distractions of the natural realm. 3Your crucifixion with Christ has severed the tie to this life, and now your true life is hidden away in God in Christ Jesus (Colossians 3:2-3 TPT). I’m not hiding from the earth, but I’m hidden from the evil one. I’m hidden from what is evil that’s trying to control my world. The resurrected life that came through crucifixion. My old life is cut. I don’t have to think like that. When I do. I repent and then I release the life of Christ, but repentance is not just words and I’ll carry on tomorrow. Repentance is, I’m going to change my way of thinking and the way I go about doing things.
I go to second Corinthians chapter 4 verse 7 in The Passion Translation. We, you and me. Are you guys still with me? Are you still relating to this teaching about your body and crucifixion, resurrection and all that kind of stuff? I need you to be focused this is important stuff here. 7We are like common clay jars that carry this glorious treasure within. Come on, what’s the glorious treasure? Life of Christ. Yes? Glorious treasure. In what kind of vessel? Clay.
I tell you what, why don’t you take your clay pot, and take all your month’s salary, take three month’s salary if you can afford it, and put it into the clay pot and then you tell me how much value the clay pot has or the treasure that’s in it? So, why do you want to put so much importance on the clay pot, which is your body and its desires?
Let’s give the hidden treasure of God that’s in us. Let’s give it so that the extraordinary overflow (immeasurable) power will be seen as God’s, not ours. Hey, the extraordinary overflow of power. What power? The resurrection life power that’s in you will be seen as God’s and not ours. That means you can live on this life with the resurrection power of God, giving glory to God constantly.
8Though we experience every kind of pressure, which your body will do in the environment that we live in, we’re not crushed by the pressure. At times we don’t know what to do, but quitting is not an option. Why, why would you quit on something that’s trying to affect your clay pot when the hidden treasure is going to solve the problem momentarily? Why quit? Stay with the hidden treasure. Stay with it. Don’t quit on it. How do you quit on the treasure that’s inside of you? You stop giving God glory, you stop looking to God for answers, and you become impatient and you just let your natural intelligence take over. Okay, let’s keep going.
9We are persecuted by others, but God has not forsaken us. We may be knocked down, but we are not knocked out. 10We continually share in the death of Jesus in our own bodies so that the resurrection life of Jesus will be revealed through our humanity. Come on, I want you to get this. 10We continually share in the death of Jesus in our own bodies. How does that work? The more you allow Jesus to dictate your passions, your desires, your time, the way that your skill and your energy is used. The more you allow Jesus to do that, the more you become free.
So, let me read this again. 10 We continually share in the death of Jesus in our own bodies. In other words, my body’s desire says, go get drunk tonight. I’m not going to, I don’t, just to be clear. I’m speaking theoretically. You, I’m going to go get drunk tonight. Not you either, it’s those oke’s out there, sorry. I’m going to go and shoot some drugs up. I’m going to go and get drunk. I’m going to go and see what else is out there and I’m going to just fulfill every desire, and if I can’t get it, I’ll go and steal it. You know, and your life is just a bunch of immoral chaos. Right?
So okay, you guys are all, you smell nice and dress nice and all that kind of stuff. So the immorality might look a very much more sophisticated way, than just shooting up and drinking. You know, sophisticated immorality is more likely to be about power politics in the corporate realm to get promoted. When someone else, before someone else gets promoted. It’s more likely to focus your time and energy about how you can increase your wealth over someone else. Or just because I want more wealth, and I want more wealth, and my purpose becomes my wealth. Or I want to achieve in some other way. So your life becomes about those things.
But the Apostle Paul says, I am identifying, I’m continually identifying, I continually share in the death of Jesus in our own bodies so that the resurrection life of Jesus will be revealed through our humanity. What this is telling you is, you got such a treasure in these clay vessels, that is willing, that is ready to be so powerful in your life, but you want to give in to everything that just stimulates you in the natural world. So, I hope you’re not taking any of what I’m saying here as a speech against your behaviour pattern because I’m not. I’m not trying to say that your behaviour pattern is a bad behaviour pattern. I am saying though, that you need to evaluate your life and see how the resurrected life of Christ is working in you. Rather than trying to be living the best life that you can live in your humanity. You have to believe that God is.
11We consider living to mean that we are constantly being handed over to death for Jesus’ sake so that the life of Jesus will be revealed through our humanity. 12 So, then, death is at work in us but it releases life in you. (2 Corinthians 4:7-12 TPT) I could say it this way, death is at work in you so that life can be released. What death? All the carnal desires, all the natural desires that you have. If that death is at work in you, it will release all of the life that is in you.
The whole idea of what Paul is teaching us here, and what Jesus is teaching us, is you can’t overcome that human clay jar by yourself. You have to let the resurrected life of Christ do that to your body.
As the church we’ve got it all wrong, stop sinning, then you will have the life. That’s not what it is. You got the life, it helps you to stop sinning. You got the life, it helps you to let everything that God’s got for you come to pass. You’ve got the life so you can even as it were, defy that very environment that you’re living in because Jesus defied it by walking on water, he calmed the storm. He turned water into wine. He healed people. He raised people from the dead. He defied everything that is the natural world said your humanity can’t do this and He quite agreed with them, He said, I know my humanity can’t do this, this is why I do everything that I see My Father do, I only say what I see Him say, and it’s all about His glory, none of Mine. He let the power of God dominate His environment, He never let His environment tell Him what to do.
This is going to become more important as the world descends into greater chaos because I don’t know if you heard about it, that President Biden of America opened up an oil pipeline from Russia into Germany. At the same time, he also closed the pipeline down in America. Now America is running out of oil. So, he has written a letter and begged OPEC, which is the Arab nations of which Iran and Iraq and all of those, are part of those ratios. He has asked them to please up their oil production because America’s running out of oil because under the Green New Deal that he was supposed to be nominated as President to do, he had to shut the pipeline down. They lost thousands of jobs, oil jobs.
What impact is that going to have? Who is going to buy the most oil that comes out of these oil-rich countries? All the big countries that have got lots of cars and lots of money. Watch what’s going to happen to our oil price, our price of gas, fuel, petrol. When you go to fill up your car next time and you hear an announcement, that a price is going up by seventy cents a litre or by forty cents a litre, you understand you cannot control that. There’s some stupid politics going on in the world, that you can’t control. What happens in your environment doesn’t have to control your future, “Oh, I think I’ll buy a smaller car that’s more gas efficient because that’s what I can think about doing so that I don’t have to pay that much money on petrol.” That is your solution.
So, what is God’s solution? “Why don’t you just take your fishing nets and put them on the other side of the boat?” “Master, you don’t understand. We’ve been fishing all night and we caught nothing, and now we’re fixing our nets that caught nothing. Because we got nothing to do today because there is no productivity today. Okay, but at Your Word—but at Your Word.” It’s the same power that was going to raise Jesus from the dead, it’s the same power that God authorized Him to speak and say, “Just put your nets on the other side.”
Well, what’s that going to do? When Jesus said that, the power of God was released into the waters and He brought all the fish in, worked on all of their instincts, and said “You got to all come and swim to this point.” So come let’s just understand this: All night, the fish was swimming away from them, because they caught nothing. At the time that was the best opportunity for them to catch fish, the fish were swimming away from them. In the time, when it is not the fishing time of the day, at that time, God said: “All of you fish in the water, go swim to their nets.” When COVID chaos is hitting our finances and our economy and jobs, and it seems like things aren’t going, you say: “No, no, I’ve got nets that are going on the other side, because there’s a resurrection power of God inside of me.”
So, let me just give you a warning about this. This is very big in my heart; this is the way I’ve lived my life. You don’t jump from being someone that’s been living by yourself, for yourself, with yourself, intellectually, in your soul, and in every way that you run your life. You don’t go from that, to being completely dependent on the resurrection power of God in one message. You got to keep hearing this, and you got to keep putting God first in your life and you got to learn some behaviour patterns that says: “I’m giving God my humanity, so that I can experience His resurrection.” It might take a bit.
The reason I’m telling you this is because some people say, I got that message. Wow, it’s a revelation. You know, I expect everything to change by tomorrow. I’m going to put in a new job application in a thousand new jobs and see if I can get one. What you’re trying to do is to say; the power of God – I know how to use it already. I’m saying to you, it takes a while to learn how to use the power of God. Well, Pastor John, how do you know that? Well, it took Jesus at least twelve years for Him to say, “Don’t you know should be about my Father’s business?” It took Him at least thirty years before He went into His ministry. Hallelujah.
11 We consider living to mean that we are constantly being handed over to death for Jesus’ sake so that the life of Jesus will be revealed through our humanity. 12 So, then, death is at work in us but it releases life in you. 13 We have the same Spirit of faith that is described in the Scriptures when it says, “First I believed, then I spoke in faith.” So we also first believe then speak in faith. See, you have to believe what I’m telling you today. If you don’t believe this, then you won’t start having faith that you can speak, your faith will still be in yourself. Hallelujah.
13 So we also first believe then speak in faith. 14 We do this because we are convinced that he who raised Jesus will raise us up with him, and together we will all be brought into his presence. So now that might sound like, well, at some point in the future, we are going to be brought into His presence. No, that means right now we are being brought into His presence. Well, how do you get that? Well, let’s keep reading? 15 Yes, all things work for your enrichment so that more of God’s marvellous grace will spread to more and more people, resulting in an even greater increase of praise to God, bringing him even more glory! That’s present tense living stuff now, that bringing Him into His presence is not a rapture or some other thing. It’s bringing Him into His presence right now.
What’s the point of being a Christian? So that you can become spiritual. What’s the point of being spiritual? So that heaven can live with you, and wherever you go, heaven goes. 16 So no wonder we don’t give up. For even though our outer person gradually wears out, our inner being is renewed every single day. If this doesn’t tell you how powerful it is to live in the resurrected way, then nothing else will, because the more wrinkles you get, the hair that you lose, the stuff that you begin to realize I’m not fifteen, I’m not twenty, I’m not twenty-five anymore – maybe some of you are, and then, okay think about you’re not eight anymore – but you know, I mean, your body, yeah, for the younger ones, they might still be growing. But this is the most unfortunate thing. You’re growing to maturity to die. I know young people don’t like to think of it like that, right, but it’s still true. You can’t become nine unless you’re eight and you can’t become twelve unless you’re eleven. And you can’t become 50 until you’ve done all of those things and thirty-nine and then become whatever. So when you’re born, you’re actually born to die. Sorry for that. Unfortunate reality check right there. So even if you’re young, you are born to die.
But this Scripture says, 16 So no wonder we don’t give up. For even though our outer person gradually wears out, our inner being is renewed every single day. 17 We view our slight, short-lived troubles in the light of eternity. In the light of the heavenly realm. 17We see our difficulties as the substance that produces for us an eternal, weighty glory far beyond all comparison, 18 because we don’t focus our attention on what is seen but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but the unseen realm is eternal. When you got born again, I’ve got good news for you. Come on, this is probably the best news you’re going to hear all year. The good news is that when you got born again and Jesus started living in your heart, everything you do, that is to His glory, is starting to add up to your eternal weight of glory, His glory and yours.
You know, most Christians, I’m nearly done with my message today. That’s my first close, and I’ve got about half an hour to get to the last, no. 17We see our difficulties that as the substance that produces for us is an eternal weighty glory, far beyond all comparison (2 Corinthians 4:16-18 TPT). So, why would you try and create as much glory for yourself on the earth, with yourself, by yourself for yourself to yourself? When God is saying, this is such a short-lived life and you think that this is all that matters? This is not all that matters. All of these things that you see are temporary. Temporary, temporary. So, we don’t focus on these things that are temporary. We focus on things that are unseen, that bring us an eternal weight of glory. What is it? It’s the resurrection power of Christ inside of you. Hallelujah. Praise Jesus.
If you understand, if you understand this resurrection power then I could not have preached this message to you forty years ago, but I said this last Sunday, I believe. I said, the marriage that Pastor Sharon and I have after forty years, is sweeter today than it was then. I explained to you at length that it is not because we’ve become comfortable together. It’s not because we know each other’s behaviour patterns. It’s not because we’ve removed conflict out of our relationship now because, you know, whatever things were there now because we’re older, they’re not there anymore. It’s not for those reasons. It is because we started to put the Word of God into our relationship and so what happened is that the resurrection life of Christ was at work when He said to me, “Love her as Christ loves the Church, and wash her with the water of the Word, so you can present her to yourself in glorious splendour without spot or blemish or wrinkle. Do that John. Speak that over her life. Do that as an act of faith in your life. Love her that way.”
I never saw anybody else loving their wives the way that I was loving her, that everybody the men that were around me all said I was becoming yellow. I’d lost my backbone, and I’ve lost my manhood because I’m no longer the man with the pants in the house. Sharon is. Because basically, she made quite a lot of demands on me. “Give up your sport, give up this, give up TV, give up this. I didn’t marry you for TV. I didn’t marry you for sport. I married to be with you.” “Jis, Lord. I’m giving up everything. She’s giving up nothing.”
But the Lord had spoken to me and He said, “If you want glory in your marriage, do this John.” And so as I obeyed Him, I never could imagine, in my wildest dreams, that as I put the Word of God at work in our marriage, now I can tell you, it’s the same power that raised Christ from the dead. That same power is in the Word of God. As I would speak the Word of God and live the Word of God, He said to me, “You do everything you can to keep strife out of your marriage because all manner of evil is where strife is. So you keep strife out of your marriage, and you love her as Christ loves the Church.”
I’ll tell you something, people, we have a marriage that most people say it’s heavenly, it’s a heavenly marriage. No, it’s a marriage made by the Heavenly Power. We have agreed many times that the kind of personalities we are, we would have gotten divorced within three years of our being married. Without a doubt. We were, we were that flammable as people in the early parts of our marriage. Any spark could blow the whole thing, but the power of the Word of God. Pastor Sharon started to receive when God first spoke to me. He then began to speak to her. You also work at keeping strife out Sharron, you also work at sorting things out, the power of God’s Word that we applied then has been active in our relationship. So that even though our jar clays have been decaying, the power of His resurrection life in our marriage has increased. It gets stronger, it gets more powerful, it gets much better.
Because what we did was not to rely on the chemistry and the attraction and the sexiness of the whole thing. We focused on what the Word of God would bring to the relationship, and so years and years and years later, we live in such harmony and unity and peace, and it’s getting better. Do we still have moments where we disagree? Of course, I still live in a clay jar, I still live in a clay jar, so does she. But everything, we bring it under the subjection to the Word of God to the obedience of the Word of God. Yes.
So, that same principle is at work in our finances. The same principle is at work in the Church. The same principle is at work in everything that we do, the more we give over to the very resurrected power of Christ in our lives, then what happens in this temporary clay pot stuff, matters less and less. So it’s not so that you shouldn’t get married, or that you shouldn’t enjoy yourself or you shouldn’t have a new car. It’s what you’re doing with the resurrected life of Christ in you. Hallelujah. Praise the Lord.
Power of Resurrection. As the Holy Spirit leads, I’m going to continue with this because if we understand the power that raised Christ from the dead, that power that’s at work in us, we begin to speak it out with faith words, words that we believe are God’s Words and words that are faith words. When we speak those words out, then that power goes to work. The Bible says that there is not one Word of God that goes out of His mouth, that will return to Him without being productive. It will accomplish that which He speaks it out to accomplish.
That’s why we have gravity because God said so. And just the same way that gravity has kept working for all these millennia. Because anyway, all these millennia, one Word from God. I don’t care how many people think gravity doesn’t exist. They’ll quickly find out it does and they spend hundreds of millions of dollars in currency to put enough energy to use other laws to break gravity. So they can go and see what’s happening on Mars. Find out it’s dead there. Hallelujah.
If we understand the resurrected power of Christ that is working in us, then that power is what we can believe in. Its words that we can speak., and as we believe it, and we speak it, then God’s power begins to work. The same way that one word from God can keep gravity in place, for as long as He ever wanted it to be, the same spoken Word of God, which is Christ Jesus, dwells in me. That same power that raised Christ, that resurrection life is my resurrection life. As I’m resurrected to that life, I’m not just resurrected to any life, I’m resurrected to that life, and because I’m resurrected to that life I can tap into that power.
If I believe it, and I don’t doubt in my heart, God says you can speak to a mountain and tell it to be removed and it will be moved into the sea. Why is He saying that? He’s saying your environment should not control you. Let the power of Christ that lives in you, let that be the order of your life. Hallelujah. Praise the Lord.
So, when you go about taking care of your humanity, brushing your teeth, combing your hair, putting your shoes on, getting in a car, and driving someplace, remember that the resurrected life of Christ lives in you. He’s waiting to even warn you about something. “Slow down. Don’t drive so fast.” That doesn’t make sense. I’m late for an appointment, or I need to get… “Slow down.” The resurrected power works in you. “No, don’t go yet. Don’t go. Just wait another ten minutes.” “I’m ready to go now, God.” My human thing of plan, plan, plan, plan, action, action. “Okay, it’s time to go now,” says I must go. “No, wait, wait ten minutes.” Why? I don’t understand. It’s not important for me to understand. It’s important for me to obey. Because then the resurrection power of God can work in my life.
I must finish with this now. I will finish, I promise, I won’t carry on much longer. I was with Brother Jerry, and we were sitting at the Durban airport. We were going to come and do a graduation here. This auditorium was packed and people were coming in from everywhere to come and to the auditorium because Brother Jerry was going to come and do the graduation ceremony here. We couldn’t fit enough chairs in here. We had overflow rooms because he was the presider of the graduation. We were supposed to leave Durban because we did a graduation ceremony up in Richards Bay and we came down and were supposed to leave Durban Airport.
The only flight that was cancelled that day was our flight, for technical reasons. So, now there’s no other flight that we can catch to get here. Somebody found out about it. Somebody made an offer, “We’ve got an aircraft for you. It’s not at the Durban airport it’s at the Virginia airport,” which is out there up the North Coast area St. Lucia. “There’s a private plane waiting with a pilot, single-prop plane with a pilot ready to fly you to Witbank.” Me and Brother Jerry and the whole team. In my mind, I’m thinking “Praise the Lord.” I mean, this is a solution right here. Praise Jesus.
So I go two Brothers Jerry, “Hey, Brother Jerry, we’ve got a plane.” I mean, I was trying to work things out in the natural I was trying to say, “If we got enough time we can get a combi and we can ride up and we can delay the service for an hour and we can sing songs and then we can kind of fly in here with a Microbus, you know, and all kind of rush out of the car, put our robes on and we can still do this if we have enough time. I’m trying to figure out a way to get Brother Jerry here. Here’s a plane. “Thank you Jesus You answered my prayers.” “Brother Jerry, we’ve got this plane.” He says, “Wait a minute, John.” He walk away from me like this, and everybody else that’s with him. (Praying in tongues). He begins to pray in the spirit. He just begins to pray and ask the Lord about this aeroplane. He comes back to me and says, “John, that’s not the aeroplane and I’m not flying in it.” “Brother Jerry, you don’t know how much effort we’ve put into getting this graduation together. How much money, how much effort, how much.” “I’m not flying on that aeroplane, John. I don’t have peace in my spirit.”
The resurrection life of Christ that was in him, “You don’t fly that plane.” About 20 minutes later, we got another offer. Someone else found out that we were stuck at the Durban International Airport. Phoned me, “John, I phoned the board members of my company, directors and board members of my company. We’ve all agreed that we want to pay for your air travel to Johannesburg. Now I’m thinking, “He doesn’t know I’ve already said no once to someone. I hope this goes well.” For their sake and mine. So he says, “The aeroplane is at the Durban Airport. The pilots will be ready in half an hour. It’s this kind of plane. It’s got this much mileage on it from aeroplane point of view.” All of the notes. “Thank you very much.” “Brother Jerry, we have another aeroplane.” He says, “Tell me the name of the aeroplane.” I said, “Well…” He asked me a few details which I had all the answers for. He says, “That’s it. That’s the plane. That’s where my peace is. Let’s go.”
So, as it turns out, when we got up into the air, our pilot had to dodge thunderstorms, lightning, and thunderstorms and find gaps in the clouds to actually get us onto the ground. So, nothing happened. Brother Jerry is still alive. I’m still alive. We had the graduation. It started a little bit late, but we had the graduation. Everything went alright. Why did he say no to the first one? I don’t know. I don’t need to understand it. I don’t need to have a logical explanation explained to me why that happened. He never had the peace. He’s the senior spiritual apostle, I’m here to serve him even though he’s coming to do our graduation. I’m here to serve him. I’m waiting on him. He says no peace, no go. The resurrection life of Christ. Hallelujah.
As we learn to live in this resurrection life, there are things that God will do. He will say to you, invest money here or take money out of there. You’ve got to do this. Go and visit this person and go and tell them this is what God is telling you. Go do this. Go and do that. Don’t do this, do this. Let me tell you, He will add wealth and He will add no sorrow to it. That’s what the Bible says. That sorrow is the anxiety that you go through to make it happen by yourself. When you put God into the equation with a resurrection life everything changes. Everything changes. “Oh, you need to pay taxes. Go fishing.” Gooi in ‘n lyn, I’m supposed to pay taxes. Throw in a line. Jesus says go fishing. I have got to pay taxes. What’s fishing got to do with it? Here’s a fish, cut him open, here’s the coin, here’s your taxes.
Jesus’, power, life of Christ. Let’s live it. Let’s live it. Let’s get closer to Him. Let’s have it as what it is in our lives. Hallelujah. Praise Jesus. You can’t have a better life than living with the resurrection power of Christ working out in your whole life.
Won’t you stand with me please. Praise the Lord. So, we’re going to do this together again. If you believe this in your heart, if you believe this and you speak this out of your mouth, this will have an eternal impact on you. So, we are all going to do this together. I want you to put your hand on your heart and say, “Jesus, You are my Lord and Saviour. Thank You for living in my heart. From this moment onwards, You are my Lord, You are my saviour. I receive the resurrection life of Christ in me right now in Jesus’ name. Hallelujah. Glory to God. Hallelujah.
I pray that as you go about your week, that the blessing of God rests upon you, that you will become much more aware of the resurrection power of Christ that lives in your clay jar, your human body, let it out. Be aware of Him, speak words that He would speak. Don’t speak opinions, speak words that He would speak. I pray that He would keep you in safety. No weapon formed against you prospers. No harm will come near you or your dwelling place. I pray that you’re blessed, going out, and blessed coming in. I pray that the favour of God rests upon all that you put your hands to. That He will cause things to happen in your life that is absolutely and for sure, the very miracle power of God working, the resurrected life of God working for you. And I pray in the name of Jesus, that you are healthy, whole, and healed. Free from oppression, depression, and physical sickness and disease. In Jesus’ name. Do you all agree with it? Say, “Amen.” Thank you for coming to church. Baai julle. Goeie middag en goeie aand. And enjoy the afternoon lunch.
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