Scripture Reference: Hebrews 12:1-2 (NKJV); 1 John 3:18-22 (MSG); Luke 18:1-8 (NKJV)
Glory to God. It’s Sunday morning service and I know you enjoyed sound and song, and all the good things that the Lord has for us. The joy of the Lord is your strength. Oh, that was so weak you in your lounges, you there on your phone or wherever, come on, the joy of the Lord is your strength. There you go, you’ve got a few people here to help you. So you’ve got to be shouting, “The joy of the Lord is my strength.” You know, come on, there with your cup of coffee, sitting down by the couch, like, “I’m going to listen to Pastor John, now, and the sound and song were good, you know.” The sound of the Lord is my… Sound of the Lord, the pfuu… [audience laughs] What? The joy of the Lord is my …? Strength [audience answers]. There you go. Go and pour that coffee out and listen. Praise Jesus. You’ve got joy now I can see you jumping up and down by your couch there, running around your lounge, “yaaaay.” And not for the Springboks or Bafana Bafana. But yay for Jesus, yay for Jesus. Hallelujah.
So I’ve got a good message for you today because what’s been happening to me is that the Holy Spirit has been speaking to me and been ministering to me about the events that are happening around the world and in South Africa. I was talking to Pastor Sharon the other day and I said to her if there’s ever been a time in our modern-day world where the current events are not immediately, visibly, showing you that there is global domination, at work. So to be clear, when the devil tempted Adam and Eve to give up their right to the earth, it was about global domination. Because if he could dominate two, then he could dominate two billion. That has not changed. So, there is weightiness and a seriousness about the church of the Lord Jesus that is the Ecclesia. We are the governing church. We are the ones that bring the will of God into the earth. And if it’s not for us, it doesn’t happen. It’s a great responsibility. But there’s something that God gives us that is truly remarkable as a believer. He gives us all the tools that we need to be what He wants us to be. And we are not people that just get the grand picture and then don’t know what to do. We get the picture and then we know exactly what to do.
Some of the greatest generals in military history are people that have done things, and they’ve looked at the lay of the land, they’ve looked at the military personnel, they’ve looked at the kind of weapons they’ve had, they’ve looked at the kind of artillery they’ve had, maybe the aircraft, whatever they’ve had at their disposal, and they’ve formed a battle plan. And sometimes you have a group of military infantry that are coming around this side, meantime, you’ve got tanks coming this side and maybe down on the other end there. You’ve got paratroopers jumping in, and then you’ve got an artillery fire that comes from this side and you have this whole battle plan.
And so you can have the plan, you can see the whole thing of where the enemy is, and where they’ve dug in, where they’ve entrenched in, where they want to come. You can have the whole battle plan. And you know that this is a serious, a serious moment, and it’s a serious thing, people’s lives are at stake. But there is something that you know, and that something that you know is, if you win this war, then you are a liberating force. You are not the one that’s doing the oppressing. You are not the one that is doing the dominating. You are not the one that’s stealing, killing, destroying people’s lives. You are the one that is bringing liberation.
So, I want to call us for the sake of this morning’s message, I want to call us the liberation movement. And it’s time to attack for liberty. It’s time to attack for liberty. Now, there’s a lot of stuff going on in our nation in South Africa, where there’s a lot of people that are opportunistic looters and opportunistic political players. They’re looting and stealing and killing and destroying, and they are causing havoc in our nation. I want to make a declaration this morning that this church of the Lord Jesus Christ; we attack with the love of God, we attack with the joy of God, and we attack with prayer. We know just how to do things so that God can use our prayers, can use our joy, can use our love in the best possible way. The way to defeat poverty, the way to defeat corruption, the way to defeat economic distress is not to go run and loot in the streets and to cause all kinds of chaos, which ultimately just makes the situation worse. It doesn’t make it any better. There might be a few people and, right around South Africa today, out of the 50 million or whatever how many people we have in our country, 60 million, there may be a million people that have done looting and that have got more goods around and they’ve benefited from it. There may be. I doubt it’s that much. But let’s say a million, what happens to the other 45 million? They got nothing. On the contrary, some of them might lose their jobs because now the distribution centres have to be rebuilt. And the supermarkets and the malls have to be rebuilt. And so now for the time being they can’t go and actually, there’s no food coming into the spaza shop in the township because they can’t get food delivered to them. I mean, this is real.
So what do we do as the church? As the church, we continue to pray, and we continue to ask God to intervene. We are bringing an attack. But our time to attack is a time for liberty and freedom. And it brings liberty and freedom and great joy to you and me. So I want to read you a passage of scripture from Hebrews chapter 12 verse one. 1Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us (Hebrews 12:1 NKJV). So we need to be doing this, this thing that we’re doing is an endurance thing. This is not we pray for a couple of nights, a couple of weeks, a couple of months. This is an endurance thing. You want to know why am I enjoying endurance athletics is because it’s partly a reminder to me always, of my own faith walk that it’s not a 100-meter sprint. I know there are athletes out there that are sprinters. In fact, when I was in my younger years when I was at high school, and when I was playing soccer in the early years after I got married, and the Lord and my wife permitted me and allowed me to have a balance between family life, church life, work life and still be able to play some sport. My strength was that I was very quick off the mark and over 50 meters I was quite fast.
So for me to translate from a speed guy to an endurance guy is quite a difficult thing but you can train your muscles for that. And so praise the Lord, so can we. If you are now only capable of running – spiritually speaking – running 50 meters, and then you feel all tired, “Gave it my best and I’m all done.” Hey, that’s alright, start 50 meters, then you do 100 meters, then you do 200 meters. And you keep going until you can do a lot more. There’s no shame in that. But this scripture says, 1… let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, 2looking unto Jesus – what do we do? We look to Jesus the author and finisher of our faith. Here is the thing, who for the joy that was set before Him… So what motivated Him? What kept Him going? What was His endurance? How did He keep Himself going with endurance? Come on, what does the Bible say? Joy, joy. Joy like a river. You know, it’s a continuous flowing thing. I’ve got joy, like a river, and it flows continuously. I’ve got joy like a river and it flows all over me [Pastor John singing]. Did I get that alright, Pastor Sharon? Not so bad. I’ve got to have joy. It’s like a river, it just flows and flows and flows. I’ve got to have joy. I can’t look at all the stuff that’s going on around me and I’ll say, “Hey, I’ve got to have endurance. I’ve got to keep going. I’ve got to be a soldier on the front. I have got to… You can but you’re the one that’s got joy because you win.
How are we going to win this battle and win this fight on the earth? That’s not our business. Our business is to pray and ask the Father and do what He tells us to do. The winning business is His business. The attacking business is our business. We attack with joy. 2…who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God (Hebrews 12:1-2 NKJV). In other words, He knew that with dying on a cross, shame was going to come with it. This is not the easiest thing to do to die on a cross, but His love attack was to die on the cross. His love attack was to give up something of Himself – give up all of Himself so that when He came through on the other side of the cross, He is now seated at the right hand of God, the throne of God and that joy of what that result was going to be is what kept Him going. You can’t do this thing without joy. You can’t do this thing without the love of God inspiring you to do it. You can’t do this thing as a human being that is aware of all these challenges and all of these problems and then think you’re going to get it done.
Hey I know, I know, over the last couple of weeks, God has been ministering to us about finances, and the Ecclesia, and firstfruits and tithing and the power of what God wants to do with our finances in the earth. Strong messages. It is like getting you really seriously ready for attack, attack, attack against the kingdom of darkness and poverty and scarcity and lack and your own fear. But let me tell you, you have the joy of the Lord that is your strength. He would not be bringing those messages to us unless He loved us and His great love for us is for us to walk in the fullness and the abundance of all things. Hallelujah. Praise the Lord.
I mean, I have to say this to you, God delivered His people from a system of slavery in Egypt. There is so much that I can say and I want to say it as quickly as I can because I don’t want to spend too much time here. But God used Egypt to allow them to grow. Remember, God sent Joseph to Egypt so that he could rule over the nation for seven fat years so that there would be the wisdom of food availability for the seven lean years. And Joseph was the one who rescued Jacob and the sons of Jacob so that they could have food. So, they stayed close by to where the food source was and the favour they had with Joseph, who was running all of Egypt. So they survived seven harsh years of drought because of the favour that was on Joseph’s life. They stayed there and as a nation, they grew there, they flourished there, they had their own territory called Goshen there but the time came and the Bible says this, the time came when there were so many Pharaohs that came and went, and the time came when there was no-one knew who Joseph was. When that Pharaoh arrived, he began to put the children of Israel to slavery because he became aware of their might and their strength as a people and he became afraid of them. So he put them to work and the more he did that, the more he actually just started to strangle them and he made them slaves. So, I want you to understand what this means. It means that what is be a good thing for our growth today could be our slaves tomorrow. It could be our slavery system tomorrow. If we grow up in a world where everything comes easy to us and everything is just all nice and hunky-dory and everybody is flourishing and everybody is growing, who would not want to keep that going? Right? I mean, everybody wants to keep that going, that’s good; we live in peace, we live in safety, we keep growing, we do what we want, God is blessing us.
Until one day there is a king that grows up and he says, “I don’t know why you guys get so much favour. I am going to put you to hard labour. I’m going to put you to slavery.” And suddenly the whole dynamic changes. So, there were 400 years of that and then there were 40 years. And in God’s time, 10 percent of the 400, it didn’t take Him but 10 percent of that time for Him to intervene. “Moses, come, you go. Okay, Moses, let’s do this, let’s do this, let’s take them out.” So, I want you to see that He took them out of a place where they used to flourish but it became their place of enslavement. Then you’ve got to trust God to move you out of that place. When God moved them out there, He moved them out of that place in power and He provided for them. He provided water, food, clothing that never wore down He provided them shelter by day, warmth by night. He provided them everything they ever needed in the harshes conditions. So, God is always going to provide for His people. But as much as His miracle power was providing for them, that was not the relationship He wanted with them. He wanted them to go to a promised land that He promised Abraham. “That’s the land your people would dwell in, and you will live in houses that you didn’t build, and you will drink from wells you didn’t dig, and you’ll eat from vineyards you didn’t plant because My blessing will be on you in that place. And then My covenant with you will grow to a new level.”
A lot of Christians want to just live in the space where God is protecting them, blessing them and they’re in this Goshen bubble. Okay, but then the time will come where that’s a natural system of growth that started with God’s supernatural provision for a short time. When the fullness of that time, you got to believe God to move you. They were not intended to stay in the wilderness for 40 years. But their unbelief, their disobedience and their murmuring kept them in the place for 40 years. So that all of those people that always looking back to Egypt and wanted Egypt, they had to die in the wilderness so a new generation could go into the Promised Land.
And so the Promised Land is where God wants us. It’s a land where He’s interactive with us, that the people that are around us that want to do war with us, He gives us the military strategy and the strength to do war with them and defeat them every time. He gives us the ability to work in the fields and do the things that you need to do to be productive, and He pours His blessing on the work that we do. He wants us to be an interactive life force receiver, where everything that we receive His life force, we live out His life force and we are blessed, and we give Him glory and honour and He blesses us, and we give Him glory and honour and He blesses us.
In the New Testament that place is the place of Ecclesia. That place is a church that understands what they need to do and how they need to operate and how they need to be on the earth. So there are many churches that think that because they have big buildings, and they’ve got lots of people in the church, that this is all God’s blessing. I don’t say that it’s not God’s blessing. But the children in the wilderness, there was no feeble among them, there was no sick, none of them was hungry, none of them. I mean, they were blessed. But that’s not where God wanted them. God wanted them in the Promised Land, so they could go to war and defeat their enemies. So that they could walk around Jericho’s walls and have it implode by the power of God. So that they could go and defeat enemies that they would never think would ever be beaten. God wanted to have that relationship with His people so that He could show Himself mighty and strong on their behalf.
So you go from a thing of, well, it’s time for us just to rest here and enjoy here and then there’s a time to attack. And our attack is a Jericho attack. How did they beat a stronghold, the big city of Jericho, which was the first that had to be given to God? They walked around that Jericho wall, one day, one day, one day, and then on the last day, seven times, and then make a big noise. And when the big noise was made, those walls came crashing in. There is no way they could have made a big enough noise to actually break down walls of a city. What happened was when they gave their praise and their shout to God, He multiplied that noise as the power of His Word and it just imploded an entire city. They didn’t have to raise a hand, not even a sword to fight that battle of the greatest one, of the mightiest stronghold cities in that whole area. That’s how we attack. That’s how we attack. We walk in His love, we walk in His protection, we walk in His favour, we walk in His blessing. Hallelujah. Praise the Lord.
So we got to just keep doing this with endurance. I’m going through a little bit of that at the moment. I’m working on some of my fitness. For a number of weeks, I didn’t do any exercise, I needed to look after my body. And so when you get back on the bicycle, now your bum is sore. Even tough years hardened cyclists, a cyclist like me, you know, I mean, young people, they’ve got this young, soft skin, you know. An older person is more wrinkly, and your skin is more like, hardened, you know, even people like me, my bum is sore.
You can’t after you’ve done a little bit of riding and your bum is sore, you say, “Neh, neh, neh, I can’t take this. I think I’ll quit riding.” You’ve got to say, “My bum is sore, I’m going to ride again tomorrow. My bum is sore but I’m going to ride again tomorrow.” And after three or four days, your bum is more sore than when you first started. Trust me, if you haven’t gone through that experience, it’s like that. But the time comes when suddenly there’s a switch and now your bum is not so sore anymore and your bum’s okay. It’s also like running, you know. The first time you go on a run for a kilometre or two kilometres and you haven’t run for a long time, I mean, your muscles are aching, your calves are sore, even your shoulders get sore. Maybe your feet are sore from not running on the road but you go do that for a couple of days, a couple of weeks, and now you start to, your muscles start to acclimatise, accommodate, ‘whara-whara’. Now you suddenly can run 5, 10 K’s and you begin to get into a groove and a rhythm and that gets easier. Your endurance begins to pick up. So we have to do this thing with endurance and not quit. Joy and the love of God and the life of God are what we have to use as tools to keep us moving forward.
I want to read to you from one John chapter three verse 18. I’m reading from The Message translation. 18My dear children, let’s not just talk about love; let’s practice real love (1 John 3:18 MSG). So this is like us talking, “Okay, let’s go cycling, let’s go running, let’s go to the gym. Yeah. Yes, last time I was there, I could pick up these weights – here’s a picture of me”. I sent out a little photograph of my Garmin when I was doing some really serious indoor training two years ago. I did a number of rides where I was doing 90 and a couple of 100 kilometre rides on an indoor trainer. That means you’re sitting on an indoor trainer for three hours plus, to get that kind of mileage. Take some discipline. Also means your bum is not, it’s tough enough to handle it. I’m not nearly there now. But I sent out that picture to some people to just inspire them and say; hey, I’ve got to get back there. If I did that before I can do it again. So I can talk about it all I like, but I’ve got to actually end up doing it.
The scripture says, 18My dear children, let’s not talk about love; let’s practice real love (1 John 3:18 MSG). Real Love is not like, I’ll buy you a teddy bear. My teddy bear is cute, I want to give you my teddy bear. That’s not what real love is, it might be part of real love. But that’s not what real love is. Real love is; if I see that you need something from me – some money, some food, something – will provide, will help. But real love is also if I see you taking over in a fault, I’ve got to come talk to you. I’ve got to give you the hard words. But I’ll be there for you every part of the way. Come on. That’s real love.
19This is the only way we’ll know we’re living truly, living in God’s reality (1 John 3:19 MSG). You want to live in God’s reality, you’ve got to live in the love of God. Now I want to just say to you it is very important for you to receive the love of God in this season. If you don’t receive the love of God in this season, you can’t attack. I don’t know if you’ve, I mean, you know, watch what sports teams that are about to go into sports combat, rugby, soccer, you know, even tennis. People that are about to go do combat with an opponent. Just recently, I mean, there’s been some big soccer tournaments in Europe and there’s been some big rugby going on here in South Africa, and you’ve watched the guys that go out there. They know they’re going to be hugely physical. And what do they do, they’re in a room, and they’ve got a coach, a couple of coaches, they got a couple of senior players, captains, they’ve got in that room there and the guys are talking to each other. They know what they’ve got to do. They’ve trained for this. They’ve practised for this. They’ve spent hours throwing the ball in, tackling, building muscle. The day’s arrived, they know what to do. This is it, this is the moment. So the only thing that’s left, you know, I’ve got to know that my team’s there for me. When my team’s there for me, I thrive at my best. And I got to trust my team.
So you find the guys in the change room, they like, you know, bump shoulders, and they bump chests and maybe they go into a bit of a wrestle to get the muscles working and they’re face to face with each other. And then they get into a huddle and they say, “Come boys, let’s go do this thing. Let’s go annihilate them. Let’s take them out at the knees. Come on, we’ve got to go give it to them. They’ve never ever felt this before.” And they run out on the field and even while they’re on the field, they’ll high five each other or bump each other or slap each other on the backside. I don’t know why guys do that. But they do that, you know. What’s with the backside? Hey, come on. Okay, I get it, it’s all right. But they do things like that or they’ll grab each other’s, you know, like on a first thing and they’ll pull each other in and hit each other with the shoulder. And sometimes they’ll slap each other in the face. What’s this all about? This is a love language. This is a joy language. This is a unity language. This is a ‘come let’s attack’ language. It doesn’t look like much to anybody else but these are just little signs; this team is together. This team is together.
And so, you know, even soccer players who are not the guys that scrum, you know. They pass the ball, they look for spaces and they run into spaces, and it’s a much more tactical game, you know. You even find them when they go on the field, even though they’re not actually going to be hugely physical, they know that their part that they’ve got to play there are team members that are going to cover for them, going to rotate into spaces, have got to cover if they’re out of position – someone’s got to cover for them. And they know that they’ve got to function as a team. Even those guys you’ll see they like high five each other and they, you know, get in and talk to each other and they say words to each other. They all know what they’re supposed to do, but they’re just touching each other. They’re talking a language of win. “Let’s win. We’re together, let’s go win. Attack, let’s go and attack these guys. Let’s just go and do what we have to do, let’s make this happen.”
I’ll tell you what, you can take a mediocre, highly functional team, and put them against the team of stars who are not a team, and the mediocre guys will beat all the stars that function as individuals any day of the week because the team game is much more powerful than the single star game. And we have to attack as a team. We got to attack the devil wherever we go, as a community. This is where the collective greatness comes in. This is where we thrive. And how do we do that? We come together and we tell each other that the love of God is there, the joy of the Lord is there. We might go on adventures together, we might go out and work together and then we come and we run together, we do some cycling together but all of that is just helping us be ready spiritually. And so when we’re ready spiritually, we go into the prayer room and say, “Okay, scrum time, let’s pray [Ps John prays in tongues]. Father, come and intervene here. Holy Spirit we ask you to work on our behalf and get the politicians to do their job and send the police and stop this violence. Praise Jesus. Scrum time.
You know, but we can’t stay like that all the time. You’ve got to walk out and you say, “Hey, it’s halftime. Guys, those boys can scrum hey? It is a heavy target these boys but we are getting there. We’ve got them, we’ve got them, we’ve got them, we’ve got them. They are not pushing us back. We’ve got them. Come on. We’ve got to go again. We’ve got to go again. They’re tiring, they’re tiring. This is high altitude stuff here. They cannot handle our altitude. We have got the altitude advantage. I mean, listen, when you go into that scrum and that scrum hits – I have spoken to a few scrummages before because that has never been my business, you know. But I have spoken to a few scrummages before, especially the front row. And I asked the one guy the one day, and he answered me like a pure, like a pure prop, you know. I said to him, “So what happens when you hit the guy, and the pressure comes on in the front row, and it is on your shoulders, and you suddenly realise this guy is stronger than you?” I said, “What happens?” He said, “No, it has not happened yet. I can’t tell you.” So I said, that is a true prop answering like that – has not happened yet, I can’t tell you. Well, in part that is the answer because if he is feeling like he has got a problem here, he has got to pull the team in tighter. He has got to have his locks in tighter. He has got to have his flanks in tighter. He can’t lie down and play dead now because maybe the guy is stronger. They just got to work on their technique. Maybe they have got to pull in tighter together and they have got to find a solution. Hallelujah.
This is our attack time now. We’ve got to find answers. We’ve got to find solutions. We’ve got to find out if there is an enemy that is coming out strong and he is coming out strong, he is trying to dislodge law and order in our nation, he is trying to bring more poverty and more disease and more violence and more kinds of stuff in our country. We are the church that can bring the solution. We do not bring the solution because we go to our politicians and that someone has got a job to do that. But our church, we are the people that can pray this in. We are the people that can bring the love of God into the situation. We are the people that bring the joy of the Lord that is part of our tool to make it happen. We can endure this thing. We can endure this thing. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Praise Jesus.
The joy of the Lord is my strength, is my strength. And I don’t like all this nonsense that’s happening in the world and all this power play that’s happening in the kingdoms of men for power grab. No, I’ve got the power. It is living in me. It is living me. I am just not going to allow the devil to keep me in Goshen and be a slave to his system. Babylon is falling and I am out of there. I am out of there. I am going with God, all the way. Hallelujah.
So I want to live in God’s reality.18-20…It’s also the way to shut down… Listen to this now, it is important, The Message translation. 18-20…It’s also the way to shut down debilitating self-criticism (1 John 3:18 MSG). When you see things going wrong in your life and issues happening in your life and I thought – I mean Pastor Sharon and I have said this many times to each other every now and again we are faced with something in our humanity that we look back and we say, “You know, I beat that humanity thing in my flesh with the Word of God five years ago. I have not had an attack on that level of humanity for five years. What is it doing in my life?” It is just the devil trying to come back and use my humanity to try and bring self-criticism to debilitate myself. Like, what is it doing here? I thought I beat this thing five years ago? I just wanted to show you that you are human. Yeah, might be human, but I’m also spiritual. And my humanity is not going to defeat me. My humanity is just here to keep my spirit here so that I can win. I know how to scrum. I know how to take that dude on. Even when there is something to it, in other words, even when I have really let myself down and there is a reason for self-criticism; the love of God is what saves me. The love of God is what saves me. (I forgot to turn something off here) 20It’s also the way to shut down debilitating self-criticism, even when there is something to it for God is greater than our worried hearts. And knows more about us than we do ourselves (1 John 3:20 MSG). Come on. This is an amazing thing that God knows more about us than we know about ourselves. And yet, He says, “My love is greater than anything that you know about yourself or do for yourself, against yourself. And this is no reason for your self-criticism to keep you in a bad place.” I receive Your love, I receive Your strength and now let the joy of the Lord rise inside of me. Let Your peace come upon me so that I no longer end up in self-criticism, self-ashamed, self-judgement ditch. I’m ready to go and do battle. I’m ready to go and scrum for Jesus. Hallelujah. Hallelujah.
21And friends, once that’s taken care of and we’re no longer accusing or condemning ourselves, we’re bold and free before God! (1 John 3:21 MSG). What does a bold and free person do before God? He says, “Come, bring it on, bring, bring, bring, you want to fight? Come, China, come.” You’ve just got to look behind you and make sure your mates are behind you when you do that, you know. “Come, come.” Okay, they’re there. “Come!” You know, that’s why it’s important that as a collective greatness people, collectively we can do this. If I try and do it on my own, I can’t make it. I can’t make it, because on my own… I mean, you know, it is this way that sometimes, in a team works scenario – I mean, I’ve seen it in a game of soccer. I’ve seen it years ago when I used to play rugby but I see it even in current rugby teams. There’s like a moment in the game, there’s a moment and the things are very, very tight and the teams are balanced very equally. And then just one guy just has a step or a run or a forward has a power moment, and he powers over the advantage line. And then the next minute the same guys are tackling a guy backwards and he has like three minutes of impact, impact, impact. And suddenly the team is lifted. And suddenly everybody says, “Let’s go, let’s go, look it’s happening, we’re making it”. And so, he still couldn’t have done that by himself even though he made a difference. He still had to have the ‘team-lift’ with him. Hallelujah.
And that’s how we are. Sometimes some of us are not so much full of joy. Sometimes we might feel like down a little bit, and we feel like, “I don’t know if we can do that”. And then someone around us says, “Come on. Hey, we can do this, hey, come on. Let’s go, Jesus. Yay.” And suddenly everybody’s lifted. Yeah, we can do this. We can go. We can do this. Praise Jesus. Praise Jesus.
21…we’re bold and free before God! 22We’re able to stretch our hands out and receive what we asked for because we’re doing what He said, doing what pleases Him… (1 John 3:21-22 MSG). Hallelujah. So we get to, you know, we get to win the prize. We win the game, because we did what pleased Him, what He asked for. Then we just hold out our hands and say, “Thank You for the prize, Lord.” Because Jesus did it because of the joy that was set before Him. Hallelujah. Praise the Lord.
So we’re in a season where the world’s going stark-raving crazy. This is our battle cry; attack. Attack with prayer, attack with the love, attack with endurance. We can’t quit on what God’s called us to do just because the world’s going crazy. No, no, this is a time when we stand up and we say it’s those few moments where you got to get up and go again, and go again, and go again. Because here’s where we make the difference. Here’s where we win the war. Hallelujah. Hallelujah.
I want to just finish off with this scripture in Luke chapter 18, verse one, 1Then He spoke a parable to them, that men always ought to pray and not lose heart (Luke 18:1 NKJV). Come on, to always pray and not lose heart. So why would he say men always ought to pray and not lose heart? Because you can pray and lose heart. How do you lose heart when you’re praying? You lose heart because you pray, and you pray, and you don’t get the results. And so, then you just say, “Oh, well, I’m not getting the results. So I’m going to just quit.” Right? So He’s saying men always ought to pray and not lose heart or not lose hope. And then He gives us a good parable of how to keep going with your praying. 2…There was in a certain city a judge who did not fear God nor regard man (Luke 18:2 NKJV). In other words, this guy had power in the city, he knew that nobody could have anything to say against him or about him. He had no regard for God. He had no regard for men. He was above the law. He was the law. And he didn’t care for anybody.
I’ll tell you what, there are nations, there are politicians, there are business people, there are communities out there that feel like there are no consequences – we can do whatever we like. 3Now, there was a widow in that city… (Luke 18:3 NKJV). You know, whenever you talk about a widow, you talk about someone, in those days, a woman would take care of the kids, take care of the home. Sometimes she would work in the field around the house, she would do things. But her job was more homely-oriented. And the men were more providers, work in the field, milk the cows, do those kinds of things. So, when you talk about a widow, you’re talking about someone who’s lost their source of protection, lost their source of income, and lost their source of value in the community. So that’s what you have to look at when you see, now there was a widow who lost her source of income, who lost her value in her community, lost her authority, lost her ability to provide. 3and she came to Him saying, “Get justice for me from my adversary.” (Luke 18:3) Why? Because she lost her influence, she lost her power, she lost her protector, she lost what she had to fight with – her husband. 4And he would not for a while; but afterward he said within himself, ‘Though I do not fear God nor regard man, 5yet because this widow troubles me I will [c]avenge her, lest by her continual coming she weary me.’ ” 6Then the Lord said, “Hear what the unjust judge said. 7And shall God not avenge His own elect who cry out day and night to Him, though He bears long with them? 8I tell you that He will avenge them speedily. Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will He really find faith on the earth?” the earth?” (Luke 18:4-8 KNJV)
In other words, what He’s saying is you can lose hope or heart in praying if your faith doesn’t have endurance in your prayers, or you quit your prayer life because you don’t see your answer in time. But He’s using this passage of Scripture to say; the unjust judge would not give vengeance but because of her persistence, he gave it to her. How much more will your heavenly Father who hears what you’re saying bring vengeance for you or bring help to use speedily, even though it may take time? In other words, the time that is your time may feel long, but in God’s time, He’s doing it speedily because there’s this difference between the natural world and the spirit world. So God’s hearing your prayer, He’s answering it speedily. In your timetable doesn’t feel like it’s that quick, it feels like it’s a long time. So don’t lose heart. Don’t lose hope, keep praying. Hallelujah.
So we find ourselves in a situation where we might look at the results around us of the earth, the things that are going on in the earth around us, the things that are happening in the world around us. We think, is God hearing our prayers, is God answering our prayers? I want to tell you that God is doing it speedily, speedily He’s answering. Our job is don’t lose hope and don’t lose heart. It’s attack time. It’s that moment where we got to push, spiritually we’ve got to push, joy we’ve got to push, prayer we’ve got to push, the love of God we’ve got to push, we’ve got to keep our peace – can’t let the world steal our peace. We’ve got to keep our joy. We’ve got to keep our love. We’ve got to keep our prayer life working strong. We’ve got to keep our faith, the shield of faith up. We’ve got to take the sword of the Spirit, and we’ve got to be ready. We’ve got to move together as a collective great group of people that God can trust, to pray His will into the earth and be there for Him for whatever He needs us to do. This is not a hardship. This is not, “Oh, my, we have got the wrong church here because we’re always talking about Ecclesia. We’ve got to govern again.”
Hey, listen, one of the greatest things you can do is if you’re a governor, and you implement laws, I tell you what, there is a great governor at the moment in the United States of America. He is the governor of Florida. And when Covid hit Florida, he made a strong decision. There was an immediate shutdown of Florida but then he started opening it up very quickly after that, but what they did is they made a strategic decision to isolate and take care of all of the elderly people and give them the best possible chance to survive. And so they had the lowest cases of Covid and the lowest cases of death in the whole of the United States of America. And when the vaccinations arrived, he gave vaccinations to the older people first and then started to roll them out the city.
The end result is they didn’t shut down their businesses again. They didn’t shut down everything. They didn’t isolate everybody, they got their schools back going, they got everything going. Life was virtually back to normal within three or four months of the original shutdown of America. And Florida is thriving. And so you go and talk to most of the people living in the state of Florida in America, they will tell you because everybody’s now talking about that he – Rick DeSantis – is going to be running for the next president because he’s dynamic, his leadership is dynamic. He’s taken on the politics, he knows how to deal with politics and he’s a strong man. Everybody’s talking about here’s the next Republican president. All the people in Florida says, “We don’t want him to run for president, because he’s such a good governor of our state. We don’t want him to run for president.” You see, when you’re a good governor that understands leadership and understands what the people need, then governing is not a burden; it’s a liberty. It liberates people, it doesn’t control people. It frees people to actually live their best selves in the community of the state of Florida.
Guess what God wants for His Ecclesia? Doesn’t want us to control, He wants us to liberate people, set people free, give people the best opportunity to live the best they can in Jesus, the best they can in God. Hallelujah.
So I can tell you now; your firstfruit is working. Your tithes and your offerings are working. Your prayers are working. The love of God is working for you. The joy of the Lord is your strength and if you feel like you haven’t got joy, go into a praise session. If you can’t do that by yourself, phone someone, do a FaceTime call and you know, just do a happy dance with them on the other side of the phone and get your joy up. It’s a choice. The joy of the Lord is your strength. If you’re losing your peace, then you’ve got to say, “Thank You, Lord, that You are my peace. And I receive the peace of God that passes my understanding and yet the peace is upon me. I receive my peace. I walk in peace, I walk in joy, I walk in life, I walk in love, I walk in power and as I just walk my light shines and I’m already attacking the devil with my life.” Hallelujah. And then, when we all do that together, nothing can stand against us. “Come, see what you can take here. I know someone. His name is Jesus. And I’ve got some other dudes around me too. They also know Jesus.” Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Glory to Jesus. Praise Jesus. Paise Jesus. Praise Jesus. Praise Jesus. Praise Jesus. Praise Jesus. Hallelujah. Glory to the name of the Lord. Great is our God and greatly to be praised. He is worthy of all thanks, all praise and all honour. And if you feel in a moment that you don’t have it, then you can rewind this little section here for 30 seconds. Praise Jesus. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Praise the Lord. You can put this on a loop, you know. Feeling a little bit down, you say, “Hey, let’s put Pastor John and the interns and the guys – let’s gooi them a little bit.” Praise You, Lord. Hallelujah. Glory to Jesus.
Hey, I’ve done enough battles in my life; I’ve fought enough battles and won enough battles where I didn’t feel like praising and I didn’t feel like the love of God was even anywhere near me. I felt like He deserted me a long time ago. But then when I cam and draw near to Him, I knew that His love was there; His joy was there; His peace was there and here I’m standing – more victorious, more powerful, more aware of more possibilities, probabilities. And I’m just revelling in His presence. Hallelujah.
So I pray that the joy of the Lord is your strength. As you hear this message, the joy of the Lord is your strength. I pray that the peace of God comes upon you and rests mightily upon you like a blanket and just shields you and covers you from all of the stress and all of the anxieties and all of the issues of the world system. I declare and I speak over you that the wisdom of God empowers you and begins to create in you a knowledge of what to do next and how to go about things in your life. I pray that God is creating opportunities for you to be abundant and be successful and have favour and have good things in your life. And there’s no reason to be ashamed of it. No reason. Don’t let the devil lie to you because other people are in poverty, that you can enjoy your prosperity. Hallelujah. And I pray above all that you will give all of who you are to Jesus. Give Him your words. Give Him your heart. Give Him your love and let the love of God rise up big inside of you because then all fear is cast away. Because the love of God drives out all fear. All fear. Hallelujah. You want to get rid of fear? Let the love of God rise up in you. Hallelujah.
I want to say this; I declare that no sickness and disease come upon your body. And if there is any sickness or weakness or disease that is upon your body, I speak to it now in the name of Jesus and I say; go from your body. Leave your body now in the name of Jesus. What I want you to do as I’m praying right now is, if there’s a place in your body where you have got a sickness or a disease or there is something wrong in your body, I want you to put your hand on your body or have somebody do that and I want you to immediately begin to say these words with me, “I put my hands on my body and I command this sickness and this disease to leave my body now, in the name of Jesus.”
Let me tell you what you’ve just done; the Bible says that you will lay hands on the sick and that they will recover. If you’ve got hands and you’ve got sickness, you just lay your hands on your sick body and you will recover. Because with what’s going on around here, maybe it’s not possible for us to lay hands on you but you’ve just done it. Hallelujah. Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord. I want to speak over you that no oppression, no depression, no anxiety and no mental anguish will come upon you. And if it has come upon you, I say it must leave your mind and leave your emotions right now in the name of Jesus. Don’t give it any more place. Don’t watch violent movies. Don’t watch aggressive movies. Don’t watch the news that is depressing. If you need to know information, watch it enough so that you can get some information or find sources. But don’t spend hours and days watching the news. It’s not going to be good for you. It’s not going to be good for you. It will undermine your faith, as dramatic as it might be, it will undermine your faith. Hallelujah.
Okay, I’ve done my bit. That was a love attack. And so, now you’ve got how to attack, attack, attack. Attack anything that comes against you, and attack anything that’s come against someone else, and we attack what’s happening in this nation in prayer. So, join us in prayer and in the Word every time that we’ve got something going in the ministry. Thank you for joining me in church today. Bless you, bless you, bless you.
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