Ps. 91:1-2. The secret place is your intimacy with God. What you say about God determines your relationship with Him. Are you saying He is your strength, He is your refuge, He is your help? He is whatever you say about Him when you are dwelling with Him. Philemon 6. Confess who you are in Christ Jesus: the wisdom of God is in me; the Lord leads me; I am the righteousness of Jesus Christ. Confess what you desire, not what you see and are experiencing. Joshua 1:5-6; Heb. 13:5 and 6. We should not be covetous, but be content because God said He will never leave or forsake us. Listen to Him, even if you are deep in sin, so that we may boldly say, “He is My Helper.” Be bold about the Bible. The more your conscience agrees with the Bible, the more your faith increases. SPEAK GOD’S WORD to your business or whatever challenge you have. Faith will work, because it comes from God, not from you. Mark 11:22-24. You get what you say. The Bible in Mark 11:23 doesn’t say you’ll get whatever you believe, but whatever you say. Watch what you say, because you are what you have been saying. Master the thoughts in your head before going to bed and when you wake up. Confess: my marriage is blessed. He gives His beloved sleep. Start confessing one thing all night and during the day.
God’s Secret: Confession, the Aspect of Faith
Praise and Worship Part 1
The move of God is most often impacted by our worship. The Spirit of God poured out on us changes the music, and brings a new song. Don’t worship the form or symbol of praise and worship. When God told Moses to make a bronze serpent on a pole so anyone bitten by a serpent would live, the people eventually began worshiping it, and today people are tempted to worship “praise and worship” and not God in their worship. Just like David, our singing should be from the Word. We can participate in worship to God through the Psalms, which were written for a people yet to be created (Psalms 102:18). Born-again believers are new creations, a new species that never existed before. What’s the difference between praise and worship? Praise is thanking God for what He’s done. Praise to God evokes a response. Worship is thanking God for who He is. Ps. 100:1 tells us to make a joyful noise unto the Lord. If you have joy, you’ll respond. Pastor Dale tells his experience with Gene Olon who was beaten in Romania, destroying 22% of his brain. Pastor Dale struggled to praise, but he did and Gene was healed and restored. Ps. 149:5 tells us to sing aloud on our bed of affliction. What’s the difference between joy and happiness? Joy is a spiritual fruit. Happiness is an emotional response. Pastor Dale shares about the time when he ministered to a Russian who found out in Moscow that his church in Siberia was set on fire and how he gave him $500, which the pastor turned around and sowed in an offering for a Christian speaker. God told him in turn to take an offering for the Siberian pastor and a new church building was built. King David couldn’t praise God like we can, because we are new creations. Worship is not an emotional response.
The Miraculous Power of God
The anointing in a body of believers will peak, then plateau, then peak, and so on, but if you can keep strife and sin out, the anointing will always increase after each plateau. A spirit of faith gets into a group of people and is contagious. Be around people who are audacious with their faith. John 14:12. You can become known for your level of faith. There are two factors involved in the corporate anointing and spirit of faith: 1) the individual’s faith and 2) the sovereignty of God. Sovereign does NOT mean ARBITRARY! It means supreme and most powerful. God will call one person to be a prophet and other one an evangelist. Jesus expects us to do everything He did and more. Follow the Word, not signs and miracles. Do the work that Jesus did: He healed and ministered to the poor among other things. He taught the people, so they would believe and receive the Word and works. (Mark 5:1-5) You can’t control the move of God (John 5:1-15). Stay away from things that add to what’s in the Bible (angels, demons, etc.). When you obey God in one point, other things will happen, because it stirs up other gifts of the Spirit. Trust the Holy Spirit to reveal to you if you need to repent. Check up on your love walk if you aren’t getting results in your own life. Revival can stir up the “dirt at the bottom of the rocks in the aquarium”. There are seasons of the power of God, but His Word is constant.
Destiny: Why We Go on and Fight
II Tim. 1:6-9. Destiny is a process of discovery and revelation. We are a people of destiny, and we don’t quit. The closer you get to your destiny, the more divine and supernatural things will happen. There’s a cost to fulfilling your destiny- you have to fight to get it, because Satan wants to steal what you have never had and to keep you from your fulfilling your destiny. FIGHT FOR YOUR DESTINY! Love finds power in you to deliver someone else. God saved us and called us with a holy calling according to His purpose and grace. Eph. 2:8-10 We are saved by grace. God loves you even with what you’ve done and haven’t done; you can’t earn salvation or His love. Find your purpose in salvation. Sin has consequences, relevance, and permanence. Sin means you’ve missed the mark. To fulfill your destiny you must get on the right road.
Pacman Faith
When life doesn’t turn out as you planned, will you believe in the goodness of the Lord? King David said in Psalm 27:13 “I had fainted, unless I had believed to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.” In the Hebrew text faint actually means to quit. God’s blessings are for today, in the land of the living. When you want to quit, check your love relationship with Jesus and you’ll find it isn’t very strong at that point. But what keeps you from quitting? Strengthen the love relationship, with God and toward others, and the strength to continue comes through that daily walk with Jesus. In Isaiah 40:28-31 God’s words to you are that He gives and renews strength to the weary as you wait upon Him. But, how do you wait on the Lord? Think about a waiter in a restaurant. That person comes to your table, finds out what you want, comes back to the table often to check with you to see if there is anything else you would like. Be like that waiter and start with these three things to wait on the Lord. First, make the Lord a priority in your daily life. Other things will want to take your attention, but give your attention to the Lord. Second, feed your spirit with the Word. You may need to double your time in the Word. Third, begin again to make a public confession of Him. Purpose in your heart to talk about God. Isaiah 50:4 and James 1:12-17. In situations that cause pain and hurt, wait to hear what the Lord has to say and then use that Word to speak directly into the conflict. The flesh wants to speak pain and hurt, but don’t speak until you’ve heard what the Lord has to say. Don’t make a mistake; don’t allow the pressure to get what you want to become bigger than your service to Him. Every good and perfect gift comes from above. God is always good and you have to believe that of Him. Pastor Dale Armstrong shares a personal testimony of how he wanted to quit and how he wanted to speak out of pain and hurt, but he chose to speak what God showed him to speak and to walk in love. You can’t beat the love of God! Love works! It always works!
Having Faith In God’s Character and Heart of Mercy
Heb. 4:16; Lam. 3:21-23; Ps. 145:8; Ps. 86:15; Luke 1:50; Luke 18:35-43; Luke 17:11-19; Titus 3:1-8. We can give mercy to others, the desperate and distressed ones, after we’ve experienced His mercy and grace. God’s attitude is mercy and grace towards people in distress. God’s heart is merciful, and His mercies are new every morning. How do we experience His mercy? We go in reverence and worship and praise and thanksgiving into the throne of grace to obtain mercy and find grace to help others in need, and then we RECEIVE sozo (wholeness, safety, rescuing from danger and destruction, healing, salvation). Jesus Christ has already made us whole; receive in thanksgiving, praise, worship, and glorifying God. Connect with God’s whole covenant, just part of it. Enter into worship- on your own- of our awesome God.
Pruning: Love that Produces Fruit
John 15:1-17. In order to see increase and fruit, we must allow God to prune away our will and wrong desires and to be more individually and corporately connected and rightly aligned with Jesus Christ. Are we saying “yes” to Him and “no” to our self-will? Have we fallen out of love with Jesus and with others? To what degree are we loving people and sacrificing ourselves for them? Have we disconnected from His will- to love one another? Allow correction to be made in your heart. Walk in love and stay free of offense. If the Word isn’t producing fruit, are you in love with people? The service started with prayer and a word given by Pastor Bob. There was ministry to married couples near the end of the service.
Healing
How can you have faith for healing? (1) God’s personality is to heal, because He is the healer (ex. 15:26; Ex. 23:25). (2) God gave us promises that He heals (Ps. 91:10, 7, 16; Ps. 103:1-3). (3) Healing is in the atonement; Jesus provided for healing when He died (Is. 53:4; Matt. 8:16-17) (4) It’s God’s will to heal (Matt. 8:2-3; III John 2). (5) Healing glorifies God (Mark2:12; Ezekiel 34:2). The church is to be God’s healing agents. Listen to Pastor Dale’s testimonies: wart on knee; God’s birthday present to him; Brother Dreshner speaking to his bones; boil under his arm in Georgia (Russia); Billy Graham with Chinese interpreter saying “sicknesses and diseases when reading Is. 53:4; young female worship leader beaten in Georgia and healed.
God’s Vision of the Church
This is the morning the church members were “grandfathered” in. Eph. 3:5-6, 10. The Body is to serve the Lord, and not to be takers. God gave up Jesus, and He is willing to give you up for the purpose of the Gospel. The joy that Jesus had in going to the cross was God’s plan for the church. People will gather, even in extreme persecution, because they have the vision of what the church is. We are in a family, are fellow partakers and heirs. We are to reveal God’s wisdom to principalities and powers. Is that what your church is doing? Your name is written in the Lamb’s Book of Life, but if you reject Jesus Christ, your name is removed. What is church membership? It is accepting the Lordship of Jesus Christ and finding your function in the body. Look for ways to serve and to give. Rom. 12:3 You must have purpose. Realize who you are and how you fit into the body. You are a member of the person sitting beside you in a church service or wherever you are with other believers.
God’s Word is Medicine
Prov. 4:20-23; Ps. 107:17-20; Matt. 12:34-37;Mark 4:14-19. You must “keep” (protect, guard) your heart. God’s Word is medicine (health) to your heart, and it goes to healing the flesh. Sickness is always from sin, from Adam’s sin on. Jesus Christ came to destroy the curse of sickness. Your words reflect what is in your heart; you must give account of the idle, non-operative words your speak. Fill your heart with the Word of God, because prosperity and healing begin in your heart. Meditate (mutter, repeat) the Word like in the negative you might worry. MAKE THE WORD FIRST PRIORITY IN YOUR LIFE. Satan comes after the Word in your heart to stop your prosperity by putting affliction on you. The Word will produce according to your heart condition. How do you heal the human spirit? Pull out the “weeds” (deceitfulness of riches, lusts or pressures, cares of this world.) Renew your mind- change the patterns of your mind. Control your thoughts with the Word. Pastor Dale shares a testimony of extreme depression and anger that he needed to change in his life.
A Vision for the Body of Christ
Eph. 3:8-11; Eph. 4:1-3, 11-13. From the beginning, God wanted a family. He didn’t leave Adam alone. As much as God loves the individual person, it isn’t about one person. It’s about the Body, the Church. The members of the five-fold ministry must love one another and work together to equip the Body. The faster and stronger the Body grows, the faster and stronger the individuals in it grow. Unity doesn’t mean conformity; the Body needs differences. Not everybody sees things the way you do, because you see things in light of the calling you have. Get hooked up with a local church, and don’t float from one part of the Body to another. There’s a limit as to how far we can go, and then someone else has to carry it from there, just like Moses and Joshua. Your point of offense is your point of deliverance, because that’s where the crisis came. Break through the past and tap into what God is doing in the church.
Prayer
James 5:16. Our prayers are effective if we are in right alignment with God. When righteous people pray in the Spirit, we pray the perfect will of God. Prayer is interactive dialogue. You must listen to God and put your ear to His heart. Sometimes we need to repent before we can hear God’s voice. Be in God’s presence. Be a worshiper. When you pray, you can change the course of history for nations, a business, the people you are praying for. How do you get manifestations? Pray! God will change things from the inside out. Hook up with God in prayer. Look for people who need Jesus and pray for them. We are in covenant relationship with God: what is His is ours. Prayer is the tool that changes everything. It causes faith to rise because we have heard the Word from God. God is still on the throne! Big things happen when righteous people in alignment pray.
Spiritual Authority
Matt. 8:8. Being under authority protects and empowers you and does not control in a manipulative way. Do not see yourself as the one who is manipulated. Authority is meant to liberate and to build up. You will never have more authority than the authority you are under. In Eph. 5:22-33, we are shown that the authority in the family is derived from the authority of the church, and you can’t understand that authority unless you understand church authority. When you leave a church it is like a divorce. Pastor Dale shares a couple experiences in which he had to submit to authority and how God took care of “you-know-whos”. God, reveal Your Glory to the church!
The Tangibility of The Anointing
Acts 8:12-21, Luke 6:12-17, Luke 5:15-17, and James 5:13-16 are the texts for this sermon. The baptism of the Holy Spirit with the evidence of speaking in tongues is found in Acts 2, 8, 9, 10, and 19. Although tongues are not mention in every text about the people receiving the baptism of the Holy Spirit, there is a tangible manifestation that could be seen by everyone there. Jesus prayed all night. Prayer is a privilege and brings power. The people who came to Jesus came to hear the Word and to be healed. The Word is a priority of the manifestations and always agrees with the Spirit. Jesus didn’t operate in hype. He operated in the anointing of the Holy Spirit. Hype dilutes the anointing. You can put pressure on the Holy Spirit to get a more accurate word of knowledge or word of wisdom. Do not try to please people. PLEASE GOD! If there is no power, pray in faith, but do not use faith or lack of it as a “pause button” to postpone the manifestation you need. If you are sick, you call for the elders of the church and let them pray over you. The prayer of faith will save the sick. PRAYER + THE WORD = MANIFESTED POWER. Part 2 is a principle of giving teaching- Using Luke 6:36-38 Pastor Dale expounds on the word “measure”. “Measure” here is not an amount, but a principle or manner of giving, so “it” is given back to you the way you give. For example, Pastor Dale shared how he received $6000 needed for a trip to Russia at “the last minute”, and the Lord showed him how hesitant he (Pastor Dale) had been to give a new suit to the drummer at his church. The “measures” of giving are: 1) Be quick to give. 2) Give your best. 3) Give something everyday. 4) Sow to the Spirit and not to the flesh.
Authority
Matt. 8:5-13 (Jesus and the Centurion). Some things are not covered by believing, and some things are not covered by prayer. You may have to speak or do something (heal the sick) with authority instead of praying for the person. The name of Jesus through faith in His name made the man well. You need to believe in the authority to use His name. You represent Jesus fully, regardless of how close you are to the pastor. Do not pamper, accommodate, and use sickness! Matthew’s version of the centurion’s servant’s healing is from the Jewish standpoint. The Roman centurion was saying that Jesus was a higher authority than him and that He could speak the word only and his servant would be healed. He said he wasn’t worthy to have Jesus come under his roof. Jesus is our “roof”- protection, our realm of power and authority. We need to put faith in His authority, that we are under His “roof”. In Luke 7:2-10 the centurion sent elders to Jesus, and they told Him that he was not worthy because he was a Gentile, and he was giving Jesus respect, because by rabbinical law the Gentile does not fellowship with the Jew. The Jews understood authority. Luke’s version was written to the Gentiles. Luke’s account says that the Centurion sent a group of elders to contact Jesus, which is showing delegated authority. When we say, “In Jesus’ name be healed”, it is really Jesus speaking. God does not want us to be independent. He wants us to be in unity with each of us keeping his/her own unique expression. You must submit to God and walk in love for John 10:10 and James 4:7 to work for you. “Agreement” is like a symphony where you maintain your uniqueness. Eph. 1:3 tells us that Jesus blessed us, meaning the body, with every spiritual blessing. Pastor Dale tells the story of the water buffalo calf, lions, a crocodile, and the herd (on YouTube) and also about a unique man named Ron Con. Satan can devour you more easily if you are not connected with the Body.
Do Not Be Deceived
Pastor Bob gave many words of exhortation from the Lord to the church at this time. The words are a call to grow up, go up, and to hear Him by sitting in His presence. We are revived, awakened, and now it is time to take the fire to the nations and to the people around us. His text was Rom. 16:17-20. It is time to wake up and know the spirit of the people we are listening to- in the pulpit, on television, or on radio. Whatever is said must be from the Word. We need to be filled with the Holy Spirit so we can be witnesses and representatives of Jesus Christ. Eph. 1:15-21 says that we need spiritual wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him… The enemy wants to deceive you, but you will get greater illumination by praying the Word and praying in the Holy Spirit. Ps. 119:129-131 tells us that His Word gives light. It separates what is emotion, flesh, and/or Spirit. Eph. 5:13 His light makes things visible and clear. We need to be wise in this world of deception.
The Biggest Block to Breakthrough
Bill Grein taught about the biggest block in breakthrough, a religion and a religious spirit. The religious people of His day, the Pharisees and Sadducees, could not receive from Jesus. They harassed the blind man whom Jesus healed by making mud with his spit and putting it on his eyes, because he did it on the Sabbath. Religion is trying to do it your own way. It is talking about what Jesus used to do. Religious people go to the past. They throw out any present day activity by Jesus and truth. In John 10:10 a thief is anyone Satan uses to come instead of Jesus.
God’s Manifested Power in Action
Janny testifies to God’s intervention, power, love, and grace as she tells how they started their ministry. They connected with Kenneth Copeland and learned many life lessons from him. They preach what they practice. We fail when we do what we want or do it the way we want. She tells of how they learned to subdue the storms by speaking the Word. Janny tells a powerful encounter with a demoniac in Africa and how God used her to set him free. Be led by God’s Spirit.
Breakthrough
Janny Grein ministered mainly through songs. The theme was breakthrough. We need to seek God and His righteousness. God and our salvation are inside us. Learn how to work your salvation. Do not let Satan make you forget who you are. God upholds the Word of and with His power.
Thirsty or Have You Had Enough
Pastor Bob gave many words of exhortation from the Lord to the church at this time. The words are a call to grow up, go up, and to hear Him by sitting in His presence. We are revived, awakened, and now it is time to take the fire to the nations and to the people around us. His text was Rom. 16:17-20. It is time to wake up and know the spirit of the people we are listening to- in the pulpit, on television, or on radio. Whatever is said must be from the Word. We need to be filled with the Holy Spirit so we can be witnesses and representatives of Jesus Christ. Eph. 1:15-21 says that we need spiritual wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him… The enemy wants to deceive you, but you will get greater illumination by praying the Word and praying in the Holy Spirit. Ps. 119:129-131 tells us that His Word gives light. It separates what is emotion, flesh, and/or Spirit. Eph. 5:13 His light makes things visible and clear. We need to be wise in this world of deception. Allow the Word to be sharp in you, so you do what He wants you to do and don’t listen to what is not truth and from the Word.