Scripture references: 1 Kings 17:1-5 & 8-24 (NLT); 2 Kings 5:9-27 (NLT); Jeremiah 23:18, 28-32 (KJV)
I am just waiting for Pastor Christi and Grobbies. I was just waiting for Pastor Christi and Grobbies. Praise the Lord.
You know with some of the things that I am talking about today, almost never get talked about in church, and it’s partly because there are very few opportunities to talk about stuff like this in church, and I am very grateful and thankful to Brother Jerry that as he ministered to his church in Fort Worth and he was ministering about familiarity and about these things because he really wants to be able to share with his people in Heritage of Faith, Fort Worth, the fullness of the gifts that flow through him. He wants that to be available to them, and part of that is because you can make such great progress. That’s the idea of it, is that you make progress, you live life according to the guidelines that God gives you.
So I am going to just jump straight into the next part, I am not going to go over the other stuff, right? Hello. I thought maybe that coffee put you to sleep or something. First Kings chapter 17, I am reading from the New Living Translation. Well, you know the story about this. 1Now Elijah, who was from Tishbe in Gilead, told King Ahab, “As surely as the Lord, the God of Israel, lives—the God I serve—there will be no dew or rain during the next few years until I give the word!” 2Then the Lord said to Elijah, 3“Go to the east and hide by Kerith Brook, near where it enters the Jordan River. 4Drink from the brook and eat what the ravens bring you, for I have commanded them to bring you food.” 5So Elijah did as the Lord told him (1 Kings 17:1-5 NLT).
Will everybody just say that; Elijah did as the Lord told him. You see, it wouldn’t make any difference if God told Elijah, “Go there,” and then he didn’t go there. Let’s just take that scenario for a minute. He is a messenger of God, he speaks out it’s not going to rain until God releases him to say it’s going to rain. Then God says, “Elijah, listen, you are going to be in desperate need because everybody is going to be in desperate need, so I am going to take care of you. Go there.” I have ministered on this one time before, and it goes along these lines; You understand that Elijah didn’t go with anybody else. Elijah went by himself. He lived in the provision of God, all by himself for three and a half years. Do you think he got lonely? Come on now, talk to me. Do you think he got lonely? But what would happen if he moved from his provision just because he got lonely?
Second thing is, part of the reason God isolated him, is because God is going to take care of him properly. He is going to sleep well, he is going to eat well, he is going to drink well. Yes, he is going to be alone, but God also wanted to separate him from all the misery that was going to happen in Israel, because he may have spoken out of turn and said something to someone before time was due. Listen, I have been in things before, where I can see things going to happen in people’s lives and God says, “Don’t say, don’t tell them, they are going to go through misery, but you can’t tell them.” I have to be quiet. I have to be quiet because it is only in that state of misery that actually they get confronted with the fact that they’ve got to come back to God. Sometimes it’s a misery of the soul. You become so miserable in your soul, you feel like; I’ve got no point of really, everything is just stale in my life.
Good, may it get staler. I don’t know if there is such a word, but anyway, it is now. May it get more stale. I can’t help my knowledge of the English language by correcting my own self. May it get more stale and may your heart grow even more weaker within you, so that you turn to God.
When it came to Elijah, God had to separate him for the misery of Israel. God could not afford to make him speak before he needs to speak, because the fullness of what needed to happen. He needed to uproot a very desperate Baal god worship root problem that had developed in his covenant people. The only way that he was going to get rid of it, was three and a half years of drought. When he would come out, he would be able to do some mighty things by God, and be able to fix some things. Come on, you may say you are preaching good Pastor John.
There he is hanging out, but then the brook dries up. Sometimes, God has got a place of provision for you and then He has got a new strategy for you and He has got a new idea, a new path for you to walk in. It doesn’t help to stay in a place where you’ve been previously provided.
8Then the Lord said to Elijah. Verse 8, 9“Go and live in the village of Zarephath, near the city of Sidon. I have instructed a widow there to feed you.” Gee, you mean Elijah is going to get fed by a widow, not some rich businessman that’s got more money than to know what to do with? No, because a widow would be in desperate need, whereas a rich man would still think that he can serve Baal and God. He probably has enough reserves to keep himself going till this point, and why must I share it with a prophet, who spoke this bad word over us anyway and most of my fortune has been depleted just keeping myself in survival. So, God sent him to a widow.
10And so as he arrived at the gates of the village, he saw a widow gathering sticks, and he asked her, “Would you please bring me a little water in a cup?” 11As she was going to get it, he called to her, “Bring me a bite of bread, too.” 12But she said, “I swear by the Lord your God that I don’t have a single piece of bread in the house. And I have only a handful of flour left in the jar and a little cooking oil in the bottom of the jug. I was just gathering a few sticks to cook this last meal, and then my son and I will die.” 13But Elijah said to her, “Don’t be afraid! Go ahead and do just what you’ve said, but make a little bread for me first. Then use what’s left to prepare a meal for yourself and your son. 14For this is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: There will always be flour and olive oil left in your containers until the time when the Lord sends rain and the crops grow again!” (1 Kings 17:13-14 NLT)
Hey, come on, church. What if she said, “Who are you? You are just a man like me. The fact that you are asking me for food means you are just as hungry as me. If you are just as hungry as me then you are just a man like me.” Perhaps she could have taken this perspective and she could have said, “Why would God want to use me, to meet your needs? I am just a widow with nothing left. Go to a rich man.” Come on, now. If she had taken the view that said; “I’ve just got so little and this is my last and why would God choose me, this singular widow in this whole village – to meet your need? Why? I am not worthy of this.”
Hey, just hear me now. When God comes out with a Word of God to the Body of Christ, through the messengers of God – Brother Copeland and Brother Jerry – and through me, the execution is through me, actually, because although there is a word that has been given about a New Door and supernatural increase, the execution of it has been said; you’ve got to go with Project Strike, you’ve got to go with Project Celebration and you’ve got to go with Project Conditioning. That’s the execution.
God speaks to Elijah and He says, “Go. I’ve got a widow that can feed you.” Now he has got the Word of the Lord. What does he do when he gets there? He finds the widow and he says, “Give me some food to eat.” She says, “I don’t have bread. I’ve got a little bit of this and I’ve got a little bit of that.” He’s executing the Word of God. “Give me that and it will never run dry until it rains.”
This is why I come to you. It’s totally under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Lord, how can I take the Word of the Lord for a new door and supernatural increase in 2020? Here’s the thing; I’ve only got a little bit that I have got to give you, but here is what’s going to happen. If you take the little bit that I have got to give you, what will happen is that you will work it and work it and every day it will never run out and it will just be there every day, every day, every day, every day, and then when the rain comes, you will be in a perfect position to get what you need to get. If you just take this view that says; “Ag no, I don’t need to do any of that, it’s too hard on me…”
Hey, listen. I know. I have been on keto for a while and then December came. No. American trip came. Then December came hot on the heels of American trip. Oh gats. Picked up kilograms of weight. Now I’ve got to get myself back to eating properly. Come on, now. When your body started getting used to sugar again… and now you’ve got to cut out all that “lekker” stuff. Your body doesn’t like it. It fights you. It fights you. You walk into the kitchen, you come home and you walk into the kitchen and find yourself gravitating to the pantry.
In our pantry, you have to switch a light on, you switch the light on in the pantry and you stand there and you look up and down the shelves and you see the rusks there and you see this there and you see that there… I haven’t been eating that stuff for a long time, but they’re there. Anyway. I say nothing about that. [Laughter.] I plead the 5th, but, you know, I walk in there one day and what?! Packets of crisps and there’s… I haven’t eaten these things in a long time and there they are. After Christmas and New Year and all that kind of stuff, now what happens? I walk back into the pantry and I am looking for the crisps and now they’re not there. What happens? Your body says, “Get in your car and buy yourself some crisps.” Right? I mean, it’s amazing how your body can talk to you. Loud like! Then you kind of, you know, pluck up your will and you say, “No, no.” Then you look at your watch and it’s only half an hour later and you find yourself back in the pantry. You have got to say, “No, I am not going back in the pantry. I am just not going to go do that.” It’s like for the first two or three days every half hour is a terrible half-hour.
Come on, now! When you are starting to put discipline onto your body, it’s like it starts screaming louder than it ever screamed before. “Don’t hold back from that lovely stuff.” I mean, a lot of it is mental, some of it just comes from smells. I mean, sometimes Sharon’s making some stuff on the pot on the stove and I walk into the house and the smell hits you [deep breath]… [slaps face] “No, John. It’s not keto. It’s Sharon’s carbs. It’s not your keto.”
I am using this as a very practical example because you get a Word from God, but then you’ve got to live out the Word from God. If you just get a Word from God that is right out there and it says; 2020 is going to be a year where there’s going to be a New Door opened for youand there is going to be a year where it is going to have supernatural increase – if you just look at that Word just like it is, well, you don’t know what necessarily to do next.
Well, this is the way I approach God myself; I say, “Lord, here’s the word. What do I do next? How do I practically live this word in my life?” When I get before God and I say, “Lord, give me some wisdom here,” and He said, “So, John, what did you do?” “Project Strike.” He said, “This is where your victory lies. You’ve got to push this victory now through 2020. You’ve got to push through this victory. You’ve got to make ground here like you’ve never made ground before.” “Yes, Sir.”
Then He said, I mean this is my conversation with the Lord, “Because of twenty years… I am going to cause a rejoicing and a joy and a celebration to rise up in the people that’s going to be part of the victory. Not just because you are celebrating twenty years, but it’s going to elevate the people’s praise and joy and peace. You are going to have community and fellowship and it’s going to raise people’s ability to motivate and inspire each other to great new heights.”
At the same time, if you do Project Conditioning, where you go on a, on a physical fitness program and you do some management of your natural body as well as a spiritual fitness program. Just do a couple of keep fit spiritual exercises. I’ve already started you on that, “I am a son of God, I am a son of God. As a son of God, I can walk by faith, I can do anything, and nothing can hold me back.” If you just keep saying, “I am a son of God; I am a son of God and no one can accuse me of anything, and no one can shame me of anything.” If you just keep saying, “I am a son of God”, that revelation will hit you. When you know what you are as the son of God, the devil’s lost you forever. Hallelujah. Praise the Lord. Glory to Jesus.
Out of familiarity, you can look at this and say, and I’ve even said this to Pastor Sharon, and I wanted to go into this whole thing of let’s do Project Strike books like we did the 4x4x40 manuals, you know. Let’s just do stuff like that, and I just felt in my heart, no, not this time. This time we’ll put some scriptures, we’ll do it differently. We’re going to go, every morning I am going to be on Facebook. We’re going to have midday messages and we’re going to even have midnight ministry. As the year goes on, we’re going to get better at it and we’re going to grow into it, and it’s going to become something that is powerful. Hallelujah.
This is the way we get it done. This is how we live it out, and so the Lord did say this to me, He said to me, “You can tell the people, that if they will go with these ways of a platform, to get a hold of this word, then I will show them individually things that they can do in their individual lives because they’re busy executing. Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord.
I didn’t know; I didn’t know. I mean I had this little bit of a fun thing going with Sarah, because this card that you got, I got it via a different channel, through what communications normally come through to me and to us in the ministry. Normally the people that I am connected with, they get copied on everything, so then they know what’s going on. In this case, it came directly to me. I came, and I showed it up on the board last Sunday and Sarah was like, “Pastor John, where did you get that?” I said, “I’ve got secret channels that you don’t know about”, and I made her understand that this secret channel, is my channel for four days. It likely made her crazy.
Because, “Who is this channel? Who is this person that’s bypassing me and us and…?” I sent it to her, and she was like, “Okay, okay now I know, now I am good. I can rest now, there’s not some other weird thing going on here.” I didn’t know until maybe ten days ago that Brother Jerry had this Word from God; to have a point of contact. This seed, maybe it’s two weeks. What God put in my heart was Project Strike, that’s pretty much the same as Point of Contact seed.
When Brother Jerry delivered the Word, God gave him also execution. We are going to tap into both. That’s why I said last week, what we are going to do is take a point of contact seed and it’s going to be your first seed that you are going to go into Project Strike, where you have seven areas where you want to walk through in your life, where you want God to show up. Where you want to make progress, where you want to change in your life. You are going to sow your seed and Brother Jerry is going to come here, in just over a bit more than two weeks, two and a half weeks, he is going to come here and we are going to give our seed and we’re going to get him to lay hands on the seed.
God sent him to us, the beginning of the year so that we can have the whole year. There are some people are not going to get Brother Jerry until November. They are going to send him the thing and he will lay hands on it. I feel like I am the privileged one, he’s going to come and put his body over us. His shadow’s going to fall, thank you, Sharon. He’s going to be right here and put his hands on it, in front of us all, and we can have that contact for our faith. You might say to me, “Pastor John, are you going to do a contact seed in seven strikes?” I am, but you did it before, eighteen months ago. I am going to do it again. “Why would you want to do it again?” Why not? God gave Brother Jerry a specific seed; contact seed. Hallelujah.
This lady, she has this amazing experience where God, is just there every day. There’s no extra oil in things, but every day she empties the oil to feed the, now enlarged, family. She has got to have oil and she has got to have meal. It’s like every time she makes it, there’s just enough. When she looks at it, there’s enough left for the next meal, and then it’s like the next meal. Every day she’s encountering God. It’s not like God said, I mean it did happen to another person in Israel at that time, where the Shunammite woman; where she went and He said, “Go and get all the barrels and let it all fill up and then you can sell it and pay your debt”, and all that kind of stuff. That was God’s strategy for them, and for her, but with Elijah the strategy was; you are going to see God every day and you are going to have to believe God every day for every day’s provision.
What an amazing thing to see God, every day. Anyway, I mean, listen, this woman, I don’t know what she believed or didn’t believe, but she was being fed every day. So now this, this prophet is in her life every day; every day he’s in her life because she’s feeding him, right? Come on, this is an important little fact; every day this prophet is in her life, every day. Are you all with me now? Please, everybody, say this with me; Every day, the prophet is in her life, every day. Okay, just so we know, just so we’re clear.
Sometime later, the woman’s son became sick. “How can it be possible that my son becomes sick and the prophet is in my house?” The two doesn’t, it doesn’t mean that because there’s a prophet in your house that you can’t get sick. It’s just like, just because the Word of God is preached from the platform, doesn’t mean to say you can’t have hardship, right?
Is it possible, actually, that if we don’t fight against flesh and blood, those same spirits that were around, they came to attack her son, because the prophet was in her house? Listen to what she said, because this is what she does say. 18Then she said to Elijah, “O man of God, what have you done to me? Never mind that she’s been kept alive. Have you come here to point out my sins and kill my son?” Because those days, when a prophet came in your life and judged your sin; you could die. 19But Elijah replied, “Give me your son,” And he took the child’s body from her arms, carried him up the stairs to the room where he was staying, and laid the body on his bed. 20Then Elijah cried out to the LORD, “O LORD my God, why have you brought tragedy to this widow who has opened her home to me, causing her son to die?” 21And he stretched himself out over the child three times and cried out to the LORD, “O LORD my God, please let this child’ life return to him.” 22The LORD heard Elijah’s prayer, and the life of the child returned, and re revived! 23Then Elijah brought him down from the upper room and gave him to his mother. “Look!” He said, “Your son is alive!” 24Then the woman told Elijah, “Now I know for sure that you are a man of God, and that the LORD truly speaks through you.” (1 Kings 17:18-24 NLT)
Well, what happened to the everyday oil and meal? You see sometimes you have this idea that if God doesn’t show up in a man, a messenger, that God is using as a man in some extravagant way, that just the provision of food every day is not enough; to prove that he is actually a messenger of God. You are looking for some extravagant supernatural outpouring of somebody being raised from the dead, or somebody’s eyes being opened, but actually the real quality and the real progress of her life was that she was alive every day. The only reason they got to the point where her son died was because he was being kept alive every day. Didn’t she say, I was going to just make enough and then we were going to go and die? Now she’s blaming the prophet of God for the death, but he was going to die from starvation anyway.
Do you see how weird this gets? People get weird about the messenger of God that God’s brought into your life; they get all weird about it. So, you said that and then that didn’t happen, but you must have meant this and then no. So how could that happen if you are still here and they got all these kind of things that happen? All of it in our modern-day world just throws up barriers; I don’t have to receive anything from him, because none of it works anyway. It’s actually familiarity because you don’t take it as God speaking, you take it as man speaking.
Now watch this, just watch this. 9So Naaman went with his horses and chariots and waited at the door. Second Kings, I apologize. Second Kings Chapter 5 verse 9, this is another story. 9So Naaman went with his horses and chariots and waited at the door of Elisha’s house. 10But Elisha sent a messenger out to him with this message: “Go and wash yourself seven times in the Jordan River. How many times, how many arrows did we strike? [Congregation shouts: Seven] How many times must he go dip? [Pastor John shows with his fingers – seven]
Well, listen that was what the Lord told me to do. He told me seven arrows. I don’t know how many strikes is good enough, but that is what I heard from the Lord. I know that, that man in the Old Testament did three; I was going to at least double that and one more, but I know that seven; scripturally speaking is the number of perfection. So that was how I felt, between me and the Lord, my obedience eighteen months ago, with Brother Jerry. How long ago is it now? It is eighteen months, yeah fifteen months.
So Naaman had leprosy. 10“Go and wash yourself seven times in the Jordan River. Then your skin will be restored, and you will be healed of your leprosy,” 11But Naaman became angry and stalked away. What? He’s got an incurable disease, someone says here’s an answer for you and he says, go to a river and dip yourself seven times; it doesn’t matter that it’s a dirty river. Do you see that actually this man’s ego was so big that he refused to even hear a prophet of God, tell him what his solution was? 11Naaman became angry and stalked away. “I thought he would certainly come out to meet me!” In other words, he’s not even; he doesn’t even care about protocol. I am an important dude and he gets angry out of protocol, then he gets angry, because the river’s bad. You talk about having all sorts of excuses not to obey God, wow!
11“I thought he would certainly come out to meet me!” he said. “I expected him to wave his hand over the leprosy and call on the name of the LORD his God and heal me! 12Aren’t the rivers of Damascus, the Abana and the Pharpar, better than any of the rivers of Israel? Why shouldn’t I wash in them and be healed?” So now, God has spoken His Word. What does he do? He gets offended, because of his ego and he gets offended because of the execution of the Word of God. He says, “My life is bigger than this, I am a bigger person than this, I am the main dude that counts; he can’t even come out and greet me and he wants me to go and wash in a river and then I thought he’ll just come because of who I am, he should come and wave his hand and say be healed, because that’s actually honourable and suitable.”
Actually, if you read further, when we are going to in a minute, he brought so much gifts with, so much treasure with, that he was going to give to him and in that mind, it was his gifts and his treasure that he had with him that he was going to give to him and all of this was all about his ego; “I’ll pay for my healing.” Huh, let me tell you something. If you ever have to give money to God to pay for something; keep it. If you believe in sowing seed to change your world that’s the spirit to have, but if you think that money is paying God for anything, you are wrong.
12So Naaman turned and went away in a rage. 13But his officers tried to reason with him and said, “Sir, if the prophet had told you to do something very difficult, wouldn’t you have done it? (2 Kings 5:9-13 NLT) Now, they are bringing the execution of the prophetic word down to his emotional level, which is way below, because actually he’s throwing a tantrum like a kid. Right? He’s throwing a tantrum like a child. They come down and they reason with him like a child. If he had not asked you to come and do fifty push-ups and fifty sit-ups and go and take your spear and prove that you could kill a falcon in flight or something, I don’t know, go kill ten warriors. Would you have not done that, to get it? They are appealing to his level of ego, his level of natural man that is just unable to see anything. They managed to get through to him at his level of ego.
I do find that oftentimes when people are like this, you have to take a step back and kind of coach them how to find the way of God. What do you think I am doing now? Preparation, so that we can have integration, that we can have all the manifestation because I know how the devil works. He wants you to be full of ego, he wants you to get mad at the Word of God, part of it is what’s happened in the past so that you can’t go into the future.
13But his officers tried to reason with him and said, 13“Sir, if the prophet had told you to do something very difficult, wouldn’t you have done it? So you should certainly obey him when he says simply, ‘Go and wash and be cured!’” The officers, who are not spiritual. They’ve got more wisdom than these guys than he is because at that moment it was all about his ego. Sometimes God will have someone come and speak to you and say, “Are you being silly or what? Pastor John is just asking you to show up at Prayer Meeting and you won’t even do that. Pastor John is just saying, sow a seed, give a tithe, do something, whatever, and you won’t even do that.” Ego, “I am mad, raging because I haven’t been treated fairly.”
14So Naaman went down to the Jordan River and dipped himself seven times, as the man of God had instructed him. And his skin became as healthy as the skin of a young child, and he was healed (2 Kings 5:13-14 NLT). Just watch what obedience did. Obedience didn’t give him the skin of a man who’d been a warrior for all the years, with all the wrinkles on it. God touched him and gave him the skin of a baby child. He was the youngest looking military leader there ever was. I mean it, no sun weathering, no life, hardship weathering, skin like a baby. He didn’t just restore him, He restored everything that happened to him, from when he was a baby on his skin, no blemishes, no wrinkles nothing, pure skin.
Let me tell you, we are right now at a time, if we will take this Word that God has given to us and walk through a New Door and have a belief, for supernatural increase, we can have the greatest results that we’ve ever had as a people. Not only will He bring us great results now, He will restore and bring it back in such a way, that the years that have been taken away by the locusts and by circumstantial weathering of your soul, weathering of your life, weathering of your finances, God’s going to restore it. That’s what the Word, God says, “He will restore all of the stuff that the locust has eaten.” Hallelujah.
I’ve got something very important to say, as I was praying about this and reading this the Lord said, “I want you to go there.” So, I am gonna go here today, because I believe Brother Jerry’s opened the door for me to go here. He was the one who spoke about familiarity. Are you all ready? After I’ve got speaking you’re gonna still love me, hey? Because I am a truth speaker, I am lovable too though. 15Then Naaman and his entire party went back to find the man of God. They stood before him, and Naaman said, “Now I know that there is no God in all the world except in Israel. So please accept a gift from your servant.” 16But Elisha replied, “As surely as the Lord lives, whom I serve, I will not accept any gifts.” And though Naaman urged him to take the gift, Elisha refused (2 Kings 5:15-16 NLT). I want to just share a testimony with you. This is not something that I have ever spoken about publicly and I will name no names and it will remain confidential, it is just the story, that is important.
There was a person, a lady in the ministry, that was looking for God to have a major breakthrough in her life and so she recognized who I was spiritually. What she did was, she brought all of her life’s jewellery to Pastor Sharon and I, which was worth a considerable fortune. She felt that this was the best and biggest seed that she could give to us. It was a considerable fortune, a lot of money, worth a lot of money. At the time we received the gift, but did nothing with it, we just kept it in a safe place because we did have no liberty, other than just to keep it in a safe place.
One year later, from that date, the Lord said to Pastor Sharon, “It’s time to give back the jewellery.” Why did that happen? Well, in the first place, it needed to be something that was from her heart and it needed to be given so completely that there was no going back, right? At the same time, God didn’t want us to hold on to that jewellery, He wanted to give it back to her. That becomes a twice sown seed. I understand that there are times in life when God doesn’t want you to take a seed and hold on to a seed because it has great value to you.
Sometimes when a seed comes to you, God will say to you, “This is not for you. You have to receive it, so the value can come to the person, but go give it back or give it to someone else.” Come on now, there are other times when people have said, “I felt led to give you significant seed” and the Lord said, “Take it, take it.” There is no one direct answer for anything in your life. You have to be led by the Holy Spirit and you have to be led by God. Elisha became aware that this man’s ego almost stopped him from getting his healing and so when he comes to proclaim that this is the God of Israel and he brought all the seed with him he said, “You can’t buy what you need from the God of Israel. What you got from God is free.” You can never say that you could buy something from God.
Watch this now, this is very important. 16But Elijah replied, “As surely as the Lord lives, whom I serve, I will not accept any gifts.” And though Naaman urged him to take the gift.” You know what it is when someone is urging you? It is like they won’t accept no for an answer. Elijah had to actually make a firm stand, “As surely as God is my God, the One that you said, there is only one living God, as surely as He is God, I am not taking your offer.” He really wanted him to take the seed. This is about his heart, because if he took the money, then he could always say, “I got the “healing, that I paid for it”, but in the wisdom of God, when God actually saved his life, I will not pay for it. You are going to live with the fact that God healed you by His grace. Can never be about the money, it’s always about the grace.
17Then Naaman said, “All right, please allow me to load two of my mules with earth from this place, and I will take it back home with me. From now on I will never again offer burnt offerings or sacrifices to any other god except the Lord. 18However may the Lord pardon me in this one thing: when my master the king goes into the temple of the god Rimmon to worship there and leans on my arm, may the Lord pardon me when I bow, too.” 19And Elijah says, “Go in peace.” So Naaman started home again.”(2 Kings 5:17-19 NLT)
Do you see what happened when Elijah stood his ground and said, “You can’t pay for God?” The next thing that he does, is he says, “I’ve got a situation at home and I am not going to worship any other god, but your God. Now, I am asking to take some dirt from this place, which is the land of Israel. I am going to sacrifice in Israel, where I am at, but the only way it can be in Israel is by taking loads of dirt with me, so that it’s like I am in Israel.” Then he says, “That I’ve got a problem. I am the captain, I am the head of the army of my king and he is going to expect me to go with him into his place of worship. Would you forgive me even now before I go there, that I am not going to be participating but I have to serve him in this way while he worships his god.” Elijah says, “Go in peace.” In other words your heart has been fixed. How did his heart get fixed? No, to the money. Hello?
This is a very important story here, because there is something about a strategy, that God gives you the execution, that what happened was he saved Naaman’s life by his obedience to the Word of God. Then when he came to give him gifts, he said, “No that’s not the strategy of God.” The next thing it is can I take dirt, because I want to worship your God. “That is good Naaman and your heart is getting right now.” I’ve got to go and serve my master and this is going to cause a conflict, so pardon me before I sin. Prophetically God says, “This is in order.” His heart is in the right place, his place in business, his place in war, cannot be changed. If it is going to get changed, I am going to change it with him for the moment this is the cause of action that he must take. Hello? That is why execution of God’s Word becomes a very important thing.
Now, 20But Gehazi, the servant of Elisha, the man of God, said to himself, a “My master should not have let this Aramean get away without accepting any of his gifts. As surely as the Lord lives, I will chase after him and get something from him.” 21So Gehazi set off after Naaman. When Naaman saw Gehazi running after him, he climbed down from his chariot and went to meet him. “Is everything all right?” Naaman asked. 22”Yes,” Gehazi said, “But my master is send me to tell you that two young prophets from the hill country of Ephraim have just arrived. He would like 75 pounds of silver and two sets of clothing to give them.” You see,Elijah could not get bought. Now he is making an excuse that there are others that need it, that have come into his company so can you please give it. 23”By all means take twice as much silver Naaman insisted. He gave him two sets of clothing, tied up the money in two bags, and sent two of his servants to carry the gifts for Gehazi. 24But when they arrived at the citadel, Gehazi took the gifts from the servants and send the men back. Then he went and hid the gifts inside the house (2 Kings 5:20-24 NLT).
Let me just tell you what is at stake here. What is at stake here is that there are things that God places on my heart and He gives them to me. He has me, as His messenger. I will tell you that there are many churches and there are many people around the world, that see a successful person, that is called by God to do a work. Then they just build a ministry, on the model of someone else’s success. That is called profiteering out of another man’s ministry. That is not connecting to another man’s ministry or to a ministry out of a pure heart.
What Gehazi said was, “I am going take the anointing that’s the prophet and I am going to take that anointing and those words that he spoke and that healing and I am going to make for myself money with the same anointing. I am going to present it as if it is my anointing and I am going to present it as if it is, but it is going be to my account. It is going to be my profit.” Hello?
Why do you think I have a relationship with Brother Jerry the way that I have? There are many people around the world that say, “You use Brother Jerry and Brother Copeland, Brother Haggin, your use their names for just about everything that you do.” Why do you think I do that? I am not looking for glory to bring to myself when I’ve actually grown up under another man’s authority and another man’s learning and teaching.
There are things that God gives me for myself and I teach them to you, but it is all ultimately based on what I’ve been taught by my actual father and by my spiritual fathers. I have no shame to tell you that I learned faith from Brother Jerry. I have no shame to tell you that this very thing of striking the ground, the principle of it was found in what God showed up in his room and spoke to him about you know, sowing in famine. Where the Lord showed him; take ten seeds and plant them and in the same year, he received hundredfold return, in aviation and in ministry and in TV and all that stuff. He planted seeds and I got that principle and I did it in my life, in a different way. In a revelation that God gave me, but I’ve got no shame to tell you that that’s where it started for me because my heart is pure about it. I give honour to my spiritual fathers that have taught me what to do.
If I began to do things and create ministries and do things out of out of my own place, for my own self for my own profit, watch what happens. 25 When he went to his master, Elisha asked to him, “Where have you been, Gehazi?” “I haven’t been anywhere,“ he replied. Well, that shows his heart right there. 26But Elisha asked him, “Don’t you realize that I was there in spirit when Naaman stepped down from his chariot to meet you? Is this the time to receive money and clothing, olive groves and vineyards, sheep and cattle, and male and female servants? Because you have done this, you and your descendants will suffer from Naaman’s leprosy forever.” When Gehazi left the room, he was covered with leprosy; and his skin was white as snow (2 Kings 5:20-27 NLT).
Can I tell you what the spirit of familiarity does? The spirit of familiarity feels like you can do things and get away with things, just because you know things. You are totally unaware of the power of the spiritual principle that you are working against or working with. If it’s not in your heart then even though it might be coming out of your mouth, you are in a bad place.
Hello, and so, here’s the thing. I believe that this morning’s message is dealing with familiarity on a different level. This is not about and understand where I am coming from. This is not about whether Gehazi, the servant didn’t know that the man that he was around was a prophet. He knew full well and up to this point he was actually in order. Right? Because he served him. How would he have served him? Can I be real basic about this, those days they didn’t have toilets that flushed. This man would have probably gone to use the latrine somewhere, and his servant Gehazi would have gone and emptied and cleaned the latrine for him.
I am trying to be basic here, so that you understand, that this servant knew that Elijah was a man, his gender was a man, he was a male man, but he was also prophet. He had witnessed this man and prophet living side by side together. When he went after Naaman, what happened was, he assumed that never has the prophetic gift been against me because I’ve served him, so I can go and get all of the wealth. This is my one time that I can break free of being a servant. This is my one opportunity in life, where I can get immensely wealthy in one moment by sharing, in this moment of glory and victory for God.
Hey, and when he comes back, Elisha says to him, did my Spirit not go with you? Was I not standing there with you? They did not see him, God had his spirit open up in the spirit realm and he was standing and he was listening to every word and listening to the conversation. When he came back with all this wealth, he asked him “Is this the time to create your future? This is not that time. Now your future will be full of sickness, sin and full of disease.”
Why was it such a big deal to God? It wasn’t just that he went against the will of God, but it is possible that what he did to Naaman, was undermined the work that God had done in Naaman’s heart. That is what happens is, that when you take the glory for yourself, you undermine other people’s faith in God.
I believe that is part of the reason why as a ministry, God has had us raise a very high standard of living, in faith. We do have a high standard here, and it’s just like Kenneth Hagin. Kenneth Hagin asked God one day, “Why do You always have me preach Your best and Your highest?” He said, “Because the people don’t know what the best and the highest look like, they can never go there.”
If you always preach to people’s humanity, in other words, if you do to Naaman like his officers did to Naaman, then all they can ever be, was hear people at that level. It takes someone that operates at a higher level to teach you what the higher level is at. Which is why I give honour to the men of God, that have imparted and input to my life that I still walk with because they have helped me get to a higher level.
Just let me tell you, just for the record sake. I have run Brother Jerry’s ministry, I’ve been a trustee for his ministry in South Africa for the last 23/24 years, I’ve watched people work for Brother Jerry, in America, leave his ministry and take his whole partner database with them, then send all his partners, mail letter to them ask them to contribute to their new ministry. It’s not just happened once. It’s happened a number of times, he’s not the only pastor to minister to suffer like that.
I can honestly tell you as I stand here today, there has never been a moment in my life where I have stood in a meeting, I will tell you, I’ve had this happen to me. Somebody has come and said, “We want to be involved in your missions in South Africa and we want to take our dollars and give it to you, so that you can use our dollars in South Africa, in your mission’s program.” I said, “No, thank you.” They said, “Why not?” I said, “Because you are connected to Brother Jerry, you give those dollars to Brother Jerry and if Brother Jerry chooses to give some of those dollars to us, then that’s his call. I am not taking money from you, because you got enough money and because you feel like you want to give me money for our ministry because you are Brother Jerry’s divine connection. I am not taking money from Brother Jerry’s divine connection for myself. This is what he did; he says, “I’ve never heard anything like this before. I’ve never seen anybody operate like this.” No, because everybody that’s from churches wants to get as much money as they can. They don’t operate out of honour and a deep sense of what God is established as His protocol spiritually in the earth.
When my spiritual leader, my apostle, my spiritual father comes and stands in my pulpit, I have an open face. I have a shameless face, that even though I had his whole database. All the years, I had this database, in fact when he actually left the ministry, I made sure that the database went with, when they closed the office in South Africa. I made sure the database went with him because I said, “I will never have anybody accuse me for something that I didn’t do.” When he comes to visit me, he can never turn around and say to me, “You took some of my people and you went after people that are willing to sow seed and you went to go and find a source for yourself.” Hallelujah. You see, because that would have been familiarity. It would have been familiarity. Hallelujah.
There are many people on the earth at the moment that speak for God, there are many people that speak for God and they are not speaking for God. I want to say; I am thankful that we have a man, that is a spiritual man that has served God all his life with integrity and he’s coming with an increased mantle of the spirit of seeing and knowing on his life and he’s coming to visit us and I am tapping into everything that he has got for us and I mean this. I don’t care where you have found yourself in the last year, the last two years, the last five years, maybe even in the last ten years. Now is your moment to walk through a New Door. Don’t let the devil lie to you that…
Thank You, Lord, that even your own familiarity with your own self, with your own familiarity with your own weaknesses, provide you the excuse to not go forward, because it’s the same spirit of familiarity. I am familiar with myself, I know what myself is, I know what my weaknesses are, I know who I am, I know what I am not capable of doing and what I am capable and therefore that’s an excuse to not to go forward. I want to live with myself, by myself, with all my stuff that I have, for all these years and I’ve never been able to make progress because I am so familiar with my own self. You may not be permitted to use that familiarity to not go forward.
When I heard Brother Jerry talk about familiarity the Lord started to get on my case and He said, “Today you’re going to deal with this thing, once and for all. You’re going to get some things out here.” Hallelujah. Just, because you’re real and honest about your own weaknesses and about your own self doesn’t give you freedom to operate and keep on operating that way. This is good preaching. I did command you to love me afterwards.
I want to tell you that I feel like my work is done today. I know we were supposed to have services after lunch, but I feel like by the Holy Spirit my work is done today. I don’t have to keep going with longer periods of time just because you’re here. I’d rather obey God and say this is what God wanted to say and shut it down and go home, because anything I have to say after this is just me and I don’t want to be me, I want to be a messenger of God. Hallelujah.
Next week, God willing, next Saturday morning I’ll deal more and you’ll see some stuff come on the website during the week, but I’ll deal more with Project Strike and Project Celebration and Conditioning. I will share more with you because I’ve got it all on my notes I promise you it’s all here. I was ready to teach you the whole day, but actually I’ve got to just follow the Holy Spirit.
I am going to read you the Scripture, Jeremiah chapter 23 verse 18, 18For who hath stood in the counsel of the Lord, and hath perceived and heard his word? Who hath marked his word, and heard it? (Jeremiah 23:18 KJV) Today you have heard His Word and today as a mark that we have heard His Word. Verse 28 of the same chapter. 28The prophet that hath a dream, let him tell a dream; and he that hath my word, let him speak my word faithfully. What is the chaff to the wheat? saith the Lord. In other words, chaff and wheat have got nothing to do with each other. In other words, if someone wants to speak a false word, with the wrong intent so that they can profit from it, that has got nothing to do with the purity of what I speak. …saith the Lord. 29Is not my word like as a fire? saith the Lord; and like a hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces?
I declare today that this message that I have spoken is like a fire from God and it is like a hammer and it is breaking that heart of familiarity that is in you, for your own self. It is breaking that heart of familiarity and it is burning all of the rubbish of words that have been spoken, that people have profited over in your life when you have some answer to say, “It’s my ego and my deal.” This word breaks it; today. 30Therefore, behold, I am against the Prophets, saith the Lord, that steal my words everyone from his neighbour.
I am against prophets that steal my words. What words do they steal? They hear what other prophets are saying, they steal their words and they go and use it as though they are prophets and make money out of it. Setting themselves up as great preachers, in the earth because they got, they’ve got a… Let me tell you this is big in the church, that there is a spirit of leadership and there’s a spirit of excellence and there’s a spirit of motivation and inspiration and organization. You have many, many churches around the world that have got, all of these great gifts that are operating and they’re making money out of it. They’re doing it because they hear words from other true pastors and shepherds and leaders and they use those words to build themselves organizations that can feed them. Feed their ministry, feed their ego, feed their pride.
30Therefore, behold, I am against the prophets, saith the Lord, that steal my words everyone from his neighbour. 31Behold, I am against the prophets, saith the Lord, that use their tongues, and say, He saith. 32Behold, I am against them that prophesy false dreams, saith the Lord, and do tell them, and cause my people to err by their lies, and by their lightness; yet I sent them not, nor commanded them: therefore they shall not profit this people at all, saith the Lord (Jeremiah 23:28-32 KJV).
Part of what God has me, preparing us for, is that we have a true prophet of God that is coming into our church. We are connected to prophets of God, that have established themselves as truth speakers. That have established themselves as true prophets of God. In fact, I don’t often like to speak that, but I am taking again liberty from Brother Jerry and the way that he spoke. Brother Jerry said this, he said, “Are you telling me that if I don’t go with the Word that you have spoken, that I will not see the results that you are talking about?” Brother Jerry said, “Yes.”
Well, why is that? Well, because the prophet of God has spoken. Any results that you might see are your own doing – if you are not going with what the prophet of God says. I take liberty from my spiritual father, that I can stand before you today and I can tell you that you may judge, my prophetic words that I’ve brought to this church over the years. Judge them; to see if any of my prophetic words have been inaccurate or wrong. Did I not prophesy when there was a time and I said, “There is an event that is going to happen in this nation that might actually bring this nation to its knees?” Marikana happened three or four months later?
I don’t often stand in the office of a prophet and it might be because of a spirit of familiarity. There have been times when God have me speak, about there’s a time of financial hardship coming and so get yourself ready because you got to be prepared for it. Right church? There have been times where God had me speak on His behalf into the airwaves for the nation and for those that were here, but certainly for our people.
I stand before you as a messenger of God. I stand before you, having heard from my spiritual father and I stand before you as someone who hears from God and I say, “The execution of what God has prophesied is – Project Strike, Project Conditioning and Project Celebration.” I tell you this now, by the Spirit of God, that if you will flow with God about, in this year, you will not recognize yourself when you get to next year. Because God will make up things for you that you couldn’t imagine He would make up for you this year, but we have got to get rid of this spirit of familiarity. Hallelujah.
When Brother Jerry comes and he is coming to preach to us, he may say some of these same things that I’ve said to you, because some of what I preached is his stuff. Then you are going to even be more ready to take it from him because our hearts are open to receive from the Apostle of God and the Prophet of God, that God has supernaturally connected us with. Hallelujah. Praise Jesus, praise Jesus.
Praise Jesus, praise Jesus, praise Jesus, praise Jesus. Glory to God, glory to Jesus, glory to Jesus. Praise the Name of Jesus, praise the Name of Jesus, praise the Name of Jesus, praise the Name of Jesus, praise the Name of Jesus, praise the Name of Jesus. Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah. Thank You Lord, thank You Lord, thank You Lord, thank You Jesus.
Ja, I am going to do this. This is by the Holy Spirit. I was sensing He was telling me something and now I know why I am supposed to finish early because He wanted to do this and not have something done afterwards.
Grobbies, you know there was a time that you knelt in the front of this church and it was a judgment against you, because of what was going on in your heart. The Lord wants me to do, I’ve told you this, that God has me wanting to work with you to restore you in a place of spiritual life, that you wilfully wasted for years. You were in darkness. The Lord wants to use you in a way, that you would have never thought possible, today. What I want you to do Grobbies, is I want you to come and kneel in the front here. Just kneel, just kneel, and now you are going to kneel before God, just kneel before God.
This is how he knelt for the first time, and it was a false kneeling, but today he kneels before God as a true disciple, repentant of his sins. Let his repentance stand as a witness to you and to everybody in this church, that you may repent from yourself. That you may choose the way of God, you may repent from familiarity, and God will restore your life. Hallelujah.
Right now, this is a moment, that if there is something that you want to repent from; spirit of familiarity or anything else that may be in your life, this is the moment. You can get into the aisle, you can get onto the front, but this is the moment. This is the moment, that God has ordained, right now.
Listen, if you are sitting there and I know none of you are judging Grobbies. Why not? Because God has forgiven him right? Don’t let anybody judge anybody else, if they get into their knees in front, about what it may or may not be. Why it doesn’t matter. This is a moment between you and God and no one else.
I am leaving to go to my room because what’s happening here is between you and God and when you are done you can leave. I bless you in Jesus Name and I’ll see you tomorrow. Please stay and have your moment with God. I already had my moments with God about this.
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