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I want to speak to you this morning
on a subject the Lord has promised to
deliver you.
The Lord has promised to deliver you.
Would you please go to Psalm 34.
Of all the 150 Psalms in the book
of Psalms, chapter 34 is my absolute favorite.
I've been in a habit of carrying it
around in my pocket on a card typed
out and in every nation pulling that out
and reading it.
Psalm 34, I want to read just a
few verses there.
Let's go to verse 4, Psalm 34.
I sought the Lord and he heard me
and delivered me from all my fears.
Verse 7.
The angel of the Lord encamped around about
them that fear him and delivered them.
Verse 17.
The righteous cry, and the Lord heareth and
out of all trouble.
You didn't finish it.
Verse 19.
Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but
the Lord delivers out of them all.
I would say this chapter is about deliverance,
wouldn't you?
Heavenly Father, we thank you for your presence
in this house this morning.
We thank you for the anointing of the
Holy Spirit and the goodness of God to
this church and to those who have been
faithful to you.
Now, Lord, we need an anointing.
We need to hear clearly from you.
We come under the anointing and unction of
the Holy Spirit because we have no strength
of our own.
We come totally dependent on you to speak
to our hearts, minister to us and strengthen
us for the battles ahead.
And we honor you.
We honor your word and give you glory.
In Christ's name I pray.
Amen.
David had been anointed King of Israel in
a secret confrontation or anointing by Samuel.
Samuel poured oil over his head and said,
You're now appointed by God as King of
Israel.
But there was a long trip.
There were many battles before we'd ever come
to the throne.
In the 21st chapter, Samuel finds David running
from Saul.
Saul had declared and vowed he was going
to kill him.
And now you see David running hastily or
at least walking hastily over the hills and
dusty roads and through the valleys.
He said, I have to get away from
the jurisdiction of this man.
He's going to kill me.
And you see an anointed man, a godly
man, a man after God's own heart.
And he's running for his life.
He said, I have to get out of
here.
He's moving, of course, in the flesh.
And the clearest, he said, I've got to
get out of the jurisdiction.
So the clearest border is in Philistia, and
the nearest city is Gath under King Achish.
He crosses the border or is in the
border, and evidently the guards lay hold of
him.
Border guards lay hold of David.
David is hoping he can get by not
being recognized and maybe just as a tourist
on his way to Gath for a shopping
spree or whatever it may be or to
get a sword sharpened.
And he listens to these men.
And they're conversing now.
They're looking at David and David overhears the
conversation.
Isn't this that famous David that they sing
about on the streets?
In Jerusalem, David is slain of ten thousands.
And weren't those our people?
Are they not Philistines that he killed?
That looks like Goliath's sword.
And David knew he was in trouble.
He heard something about him being taken to
Gath, the king, to Achish, king of Gath.
And David panics.
David knows that he's going to be accused
of being a terrorist.
He knows that he's going to be beaten
then.
He knows he'll be dragged all through the
Philistine cities and made a spectacle.
And he fears for his life.
Suddenly, David pretends to be a madman.
Suddenly, he goes into contortions.
His face is contorted.
A spittle comes down his beard.
And he's spouting nonsense and senseless phrases and
wiggling and striking at them.
And in that particular climate and time, they
would not go near a mad person or
someone of insanity because they believed demons would
jump upon them.
And these men said, we'd better take him
to the king.
And they take him into the palace of
King Achish.
And Achish watches David.
What a scene it must be.
Here's a man of God, been anointed king.
And he's in panic.
And he's putting on a scene.
He's scratching on the doors, making the scratching
sound, screaming, probably wallowing on the floor and
just babbling senselessly.
And Achish pulled back.
He said, why would you bring a madman
in my presence?
I don't know if he's afraid of the
demons too.
But he said, get him out of here.
David is escorted to the border.
And he's told, never again come back.
Get out of here.
David escapes to the cave Adulam.
And it's in probably in the cave or
not long after his freedom out of that
terrible situation that he pens this chapter, the
34th chapter of Psalms.
He's talking about how God had delivered him.
He's recalling the whole episode, how God had
set him free.
Now, I don't believe the Holy Spirit.
I don't believe the Lord told him to
act the fool because the Bible says God's
not given a spirit of fear, but love
and power and a sound mind.
That's not a sound mind.
And so so David is actually moving in
fear.
He's moving in the flesh.
But he pens this incredible chapter.
These words, I sought the Lord.
He heard me.
He delivered me.
The aims of the Lord.
He said, I cried to the Lord.
When did he cry?
Well, because this is he's he's playing the
fool.
You know that he's not praying audibly.
He has to be screaming inside.
There has to be a silent prayer going
on.
David said, I cried to the Lord.
I made my petition known.
And you read this.
You hear he said this poor man cried.
The Lord heard him and saved him out
of this trouble.
Sometimes the loudest cry is inaudible.
I've known what it's like.
And many of you know what it's like
to be so overwhelmed in situations and circumstances.
You're so overwhelmed.
You can't pray.
You can't speak out.
I've known what it is to be in
circumstances that I didn't understand so far beyond
me.
Such pain.
I would just sit in my study and
sit in a chair and say, God, I
don't know what to say.
I don't know what to do.
I don't even feel like praying.
But, oh, God, help.
Just help.
Have you ever been there?
Have you been there where you say, God,
I don't know how to answer you.
I don't know what this is all about.
I can't explain it.
I'm in pain.
I'm overwhelmed.
And here is David having to acknowledge, Lord,
what's going on with me?
I'm playing a fool.
He knows.
He's conscious of what he's doing.
Why am I doing this?
What's happening to me?
And he's crying out inaudibly his loud voice.
I honestly believe that some of the loudest
prayers I've prayed, the most important prayers I've
prayed, the most heart-reaching to God's heart
have been in total silence, where it's just
been a word, help.
And I'm telling you now, whatever you're in,
no matter what you're going through, and you
don't feel like praying, you see the problem
is often we just clam up.
We just close in on ourselves and say,
God doesn't care.
God would not have allowed this in my
life if I were right.
There's something going wrong and I don't understand.
So we clam up or we go eat
or we watch television and try to just
try to ease our conscience and try to
break through human efforts.
But God sometimes comes in.
So and I know he comes in.
He hears the most quiet, the most.
You see, we think it's not feeling.
We think if we're not crying out, if
we're not screaming at God, he doesn't hear.
God hears every whimper.
God hears every every inaudible voice that cries
out.
And that's why David said, my heart cried
out to him.
There is a heart cry.
I shot the Lord and I cried.
This poor man cried in 1958 as a
skinny.
I was one hundred and seventeen pounds when
I first came to New York.
Somebody said, when he turns around, you think
he's raptured.
One man said, if he drinks Kool-Aid,
he looks like a thermometer.
I was mocked and ridiculed.
I was naive.
And I came to New York City because
I felt the Holy Spirit spoke to me
to come.
I'd seen a picture of seven boys indicted
for murder.
And I came here weeping and broken hearted
and just a country preacher.
And I went to the trial.
And this story has been told many, many
times.
But there's a point I'm trying to make.
And I, I felt I went to a
Friday session and I knew at the end
of the session they would be dismissed.
Those boys would go into a side cell
and wait to be taken back to prison.
And once that happened, I would never be
seen.
The Lord spoke my heart, tried to talk
to them about Christ to see if they
they need help.
They need Christ.
I went to the sitting in the court
and suddenly something came on me.
I took my Bible and I heard there
was an impulse, a spirit of the Lord.
At least that's what I believed.
And I still believe.
And I get up and I approach the
judge's bench.
His name was Davidson.
I said, Judge Davidson, would you give me
a moment with these boys, please?
The police jumped up and I was unceremoniously
escorted and dragged out of that courtroom.
And I'm thinking, oh, God, what happened?
God, everything's spinning out of control.
And I'm taken out in front of the
lobby of that courtroom and flashbulbs flashing.
And so my dad's going to see that.
My dad's assistant superintendent of the Assembly of
God in the state.
And my people are going to think I'm
crazy.
And I'm crying inside.
God, what's happening to me?
What's going wrong?
I thought you told me.
I had someone sent me a picture from
the Daily News.
And I don't know why I had a
bow tie on.
And the silliest looking country coat, salt and
pepper, almost white.
And I'm looking at that.
And I said, I was the most stupid,
naive person.
I look at that bow tie.
I never wore a bow tie.
But at that courtroom, I wore a bow
tie as if I were going to some
function.
This poor man cried, and the Lord heard
him.
I remember that cry.
I remember that I couldn't pray out loud
in front of the people.
They thought I was crazy anyhow.
Can you imagine what they thought if I'm
suddenly on my knees praying or crying out?
Oh, God, help me, deliver me.
I don't know what happened.
There was something inside, and God heard that
cry.
And he honored it to this very day.
David said he comes out of it, and
he's writing this story.
He said, I will boast of my Lord.
First verse, I will bless the Lord at
all times and praise Him continually in my
mouth.
Second verse, my soul shall make a boast
in the Lord.
The humble shall hear thereof and be glad.
And he's saying to you, and he's saying
to me, I'm going to boast on how
God delivered me even though I was in
foolishness.
Even though I made a foolish move.
Even this was not truly how.
See, God could have delivered him in any
way.
God could have blinded those guides, and David
could have escaped.
He could have stricken Achish.
There are any ways that he could have
done it.
David said, I took it in my own
hands.
I walked in the flesh, and still I'm
going to boast on the Lord because I
cried out.
I prayed.
I took it to the Lord.
God heard me, and God delivered me.
The lesson is God hears and responds to
the faintest cry of his people.
Let me give you another scene that has
to do with deliverance of God's people.
You don't need to turn there.
But in 2 Peter, we read of the
flood, and we read of the fire falling
on Sodom and Gomorrah.
And picture this scene.
What do you see when you think of
the flood?
Have you ever tried to vividly picture that
scene?
The water rising in 40 days and 40
nights of rain, and it's rising, and it
rises in the people's homes.
And those who know how to swim are
people getting a piece of furniture or a
piece of wood, anything to hold on to,
climbing trees until it's over their heads.
And finally, a scene of bodies floating everywhere.
When you think of Sodom and Gomorrah, what
is the picture you see?
Is it just vengeance?
You see the sulfuric fumes suffocating people by
the thousands, and they're screaming and suffocating and
falling in fire and brimstone.
Yes, you see, the Bible does say that
these things happened.
The Scripture said he spared not the old
world.
He brought down the flood on the world.
He turned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah
into ashes, making them examples unto them that
afterwards should live ungodly.
But you see, this scene has nothing to
do with God's people.
It has nothing to do with me at
all.
It has nothing to do with overcoming Christians.
That's the sign.
That is an example.
God says, I want you to know that
I deal with violence.
I deal with rampant sin.
There is a wrath of God upon the
wicked who refuse 120 years of preaching.
Upon those who have turned themselves over to
sin, there will be a judgment day.
But, folks, what do you see?
What are you supposed to see?
Because that whole episode begins with the greatest
if in the Bible.
Let me just, do you want to go
there, if you will, please?
2 Peter, and let me show it to
you, because it has everything to do with
God's people.
If you get to Hebrews, you're getting close.
2 Peter, verse 4.
For if God, now I want you to
focus on if, please.
We're talking about deliverance.
If God spared not the angels that sinned,
but cast them down to hell and delivered
them into chains of darkness to be reserved,
and spared not the old world, but saved
Noah, the eighth person, a preacher of righteousness,
bringing in the flood upon the world and
in godliness.
And, in other words, if, and if, he
turned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah into
ashes, condemning them with an overflow, making them
an example unto those who after which live
ungodly, and delivered just Lot vexed with the
filthy of the conversation of the world.
For that goodness man dwelling among them and
seeing and hearing vexed his righteous soul.
Alright, listen to me before we read the
next verse.
Here's what God is saying to his people.
If I, in the midst of a flood,
when the whole world is being, known earth
at the time, is being destroyed, and I'm
taking vengeance on violence, yet I focus on
one man and his family.
It's right there.
It says, and he spared not the old
world, but saved Noah, the eighth person, a
preacher of righteousness.
Then he goes on, he said, If in
the wrath of God, everything around you is
coming down in fire and brimstone, come back
to if, if that happens, then you go
down to verse 9, Then the Lord knoweth
how to deliver the godly out of temptation,
and to reserve the unjust of the day
of judgment to be punished.
The Lord knoweth how to deliver.
God says, I'm just giving you two of
the greatest examples mankind could ever know.
If I have compassion on one righteous man
and his family, and I save Noah, if
I can save Noah when the world is
falling apart, if I can save Lot and
his daughters and send an angel and drag
them out, do I not know how to
deliver you?
Do I not know how to come and
save you?
What he's saying, if the whole city around
you begins to crumble, if everything goes wrong,
if you will trust me, And the lesson
is this.
God will go to any extreme.
God will do whatever it takes to do
to deliver his people from their battles and
from their temptations.
God will do what it takes.
Do you see it?
How about an amen then?
What a wonderful
thought that he would care for me.
You see, it took the opening of the
Red Sea to deliver God's people.
It took water out of a rock.
These are miracles.
When you look at how God, all through
the Bible, it took a miracle to save
them from hunger.
Water or bread falls from the skies.
And it took an ark for the saving
of Noah.
So don't doubt that God doesn't know a
way.
God knows.
He knoweth how.
And you see, what that really means, God
knows how to deliver.
That simply means he already has plans.
God never sits on his plans.
God never has a plan and says, well,
one day at one time I'll set this
in order.
Because God has a plan.
He knows.
I don't care what you're going through.
And I don't care what I'm going through.
Before I ever go into it, he had
a plan.
He had a plan.
He has a way.
And he's not going to do it the
way you figured it out last night in
bed.
He's not going to figure it out in
all the options that you've offered him.
He would not accept one of your offers
with any flesh in it.
He said, no, no, no, no, that's not
my way.
That's your way.
My ways are above your ways.
My thoughts are above your thoughts.
You can't conceive it.
God knoweth how to deliver.
And let me take you to Jeremiah 29.
You don't have to turn to Jeremiah, the
29th verse.
This is confirmed by Jeremiah.
He said, before you cry, before you call,
I will answer.
Do you believe that God has the foreknowledge
that he can anticipate every foolish move you
and I make?
He can he can foresee all of our
doubts and our fears.
But you see, he said, David said, I
cried out to the Lord.
I went to the Lord.
I prayed.
I sought the Lord.
What are you doing in your crisis?
Are you pouting or are you just saying,
well, I'm not going to question God, but
I sure do question myself.
Because in questioning yourself, you're still questioning God.
What do you do in Jeremiah?
Israel's in captivity in Babylon.
And it's the greatest trial they've ever been
through.
And God had told him, he said, after
70 years, I'm going to visit you and
I'm going to deliver you.
For my thoughts that I think toward you,
saith the Lord, are thoughts of peace and
not of evil to give you an expected
end.
And in Hebrew, the expected end, I'm going
to give you that which you long for.
God said, my thoughts are not evil towards
you, but I am thinking good thoughts towards
you.
I'm going to tell you something.
And I believe this all my heart.
You can never be delivered from your temptation.
You cannot be delivered from any crisis that
you're in.
You cannot be delivered until you fully are
convinced that God means what he says.
I am thinking good thoughts about you.
I'm not mad at you.
I'm thinking good thoughts and not evil thoughts.
And if he's thinking good thoughts, his thoughts
actually are creating something.
His thoughts are creative.
And if he's thinking it, he's in the
process of doing it.
And as I've told you a hundred times,
the hardest part of faith is the last
half hour.
And then you say, oh, I wish I
had believed.
I wish.
And then you doubt because you doubted.
He says, then you shall call upon me.
This is still in Jeremiah, 29 chapter.
Then you shall call upon me and you
shall go and pray to me and I
will hearken to you.
I'll listen to you.
He said, I'm making you the promise.
I'm telling you that I'm not mad at
you.
I'm thinking good thoughts about you.
And I want you to believe that.
And I want that to promote you.
I want that to provoke you to go
into the prayer room and pray in faith.
Then you'll call upon me.
Then you'll pray.
Then I'll hearken to you.
I've got good thoughts about you.
I have a plan.
Now go and pray about it.
And the reason he wants you to pray
is to get ready.
To get ready to receive the glory of
those thoughts that he's been thinking.
You know, when I was studying this matter
of deliverance, the Holy Spirit spoke clearly to
me.
Go to Hezekiah and study his life.
And so this past week I've been studying
the life of Hezekiah.
Let me tell you what God says about
the Bible says about him.
He's a godly, godly king of Judah.
And the Bible says he did that was
right in the sight of God.
He pulled down idols.
He outlawed idol worship.
The Bible said he claved to the Lord.
He never departed from the Lord.
The Lord was with him wherever he went
and in all that he did.
The Bible says he called a backslidden nation
to God.
He was a man of prayer.
A man of worship.
He preached holiness and separation from the world.
He greatly feared the Lord.
He was blessed and favored by God.
He was prospered in all of his ways.
And to cap it all off, the Scripture
says Hezekiah worked that which was good and
right and truthful before the Lord his God.
And every work that he began in the
service of the Lord and in the law
and his commandments to seek his God, he
did it with all his heart and he
prospered.
Do you understand what God is saying?
Here's a man, in fact the Bible calls
him the greatest king.
It said there was no one like him
before, no one like him, and one who
had so set his heart on God.
Do the righteous suffer?
Does the devil aim his greatest weapons, his
most powerful, intense weapons against those such as
I've described to you now?
Those who pray, those who worship, those who
are called.
The Scripture says the very next chapter after,
I just read you these words, no one
sought him more with all his heart and
soul and mind.
He sought God with everything he is.
And the next verse, it says, then after
all these things, it says, after all these
things and the establishment thereof.
In other words, everything that he's done is
now established.
He's established ministry after ministry after ministry.
He's done these great things for God.
And after all these things, the Scriptures, then
came Sennacherib, who represents the devil himself and
his Assyrian army, which represents all the principalities
and powers of darkness.
After these things and the establishment thereof, Sennacherib,
king of Assyria, came, entered into Judah and
camped against the fence cities and thought to
take it all for himself.
That's the devil's whole plan.
He comes to the righteous.
He comes, and many of you don't know
that that's why the enemies come against you,
because the devil is trying to do just
as he did to Hezekiah.
Throw these terrible lies into your head.
Throw them over the wall at you.
That protective wall, throwing them over the wall.
Your God is not with you.
God has failed you.
You're going down.
I've taken down greater men than you.
Hezekiah was told by Sennacherib.
He said, and you're going down next.
God sent me.
The devil said, God sent me.
God told me to tell you this.
And then all these little voices begin to
pop in your head.
You're a failure.
There's something wrong, or you wouldn't be suffering.
You wouldn't be sick.
You wouldn't be going through what you are.
There's something wrong with you.
There's something wrong.
You're under discipline.
This man was not under discipline.
This man was righteous.
This man was holy.
This man sought God with all of his
heart.
Then came Sennacherib.
Then came Sennacherib to take it to himself.
And Sennacherib has to sit and listen to
reports as 46 of his cities are destroyed
and taken down.
And Sennacherib begins to lay siege on Jerusalem.
Word comes to him that 209,000 of
the Judaites had been captured.
He finds out that many of his troops
are deserting to Sennacherib.
He finds that those he trusted most, who
thought they were righteous and that he had
built such a revival, and now he discovers
that they're turning, running out of the city
gates, turning themselves over, and beginning even to
fight in Sennacherib's army.
And those reports are all still available in
the annals of Sennacherib, still in possession of
historians today, his whole story, how he came
with battering rams, how he set up all
kinds of tricks and dug under walls and
stopped the water flows, and all the attacks
coming against Israel.
And can you imagine Hezekiah going through this?
And for a while he wavered in his
faith.
He wavered.
Sennacherib demanded huge amounts of gold and silver,
asked for his daughters to go into his
harem according to Sennacherib's report, and demanded all
of these things.
And at first a letter was sent to
Lachish where the king had set up a
temporary ivory throne.
And he sends him a letter and says,
all that you ask I will do, because
he felt helpless, there was nothing to do,
and said, I'm going to take the easy
way.
Isaiah the prophet came to him and said,
no.
There were two attacks by Sennacherib.
He backed away for a while, but then
he comes back, and that's the trick of
the enemy.
He'll attack you, and if there is not
a stand of faith, if you do not
stand up against him in faith and prayer
and go into the house of God, if
you don't hear the prophets, if you don't
hear the word that comes, the prophetic word
to strengthen you, and you begin to just
ease off, you just back up and say,
I don't want to fight this anymore, and
you get nervous, you get afraid, and you're
scared, and the enemy is winning the battle.
And when he sees that weakness, you see,
the whole battle is against our faith.
That's what it's all about.
He's going after it.
He doesn't want the gold.
He doesn't want the silver.
He doesn't really want those women in his
harem.
He's got more women that he can handle
in his harem.
He wants to be able to bring this
man's faith, because this is the only man,
the only king that stood against him, and
it was this faith in God, and what
the devil is after.
The test you're going through is a test
of faith.
Will you believe God in the hardest of
times?
Will you believe God no matter what's happening
to your body, no matter what has happened
to your family, no matter what has happened
around you, and you're going to take a
stand.
And now, through the advice and prayers of
Isaiah, he goes into the temple of God.
He goes into the house of God, and
this time he gets another letter from Sennacherib,
and he lays it before the Lord.
And the Lord says to Isaiah, tell Hezekiah
to send you back another letter, and tell
him, O King Sennacherib, not this time.
I'm not the one going down.
You're the one that's going down.
My God said he's going to deliver me.
Did you ever get a letter from the
devil?
You see, he goes to the Lord, and
he prays, and this is the prayer he
prayed, Lord, this day is a day of
trouble and of rebuke and blasphemy, for the
children are come to the birth, and there's
no strength to bring forth.
Oh, how many times God's people, how we
come to that place, we say this is
a day of trouble and shame and rebuke.
I don't have the strength.
And Hezekiah goes to the house of God,
and he said, Lord, I have no strength
left.
I don't know what to do.
And he turns it all into the hands
of the Lord.
And Isaiah said to King Hezekiah, the Lord
has heard you.
He said God's going to move and deliver
you.
You see, folks, we have better promises than
Hezekiah had.
We have a cross where Jesus took all
of our pain, and He made a way.
And the Bible said the deliverer shall come
out of Zion.
And that's what He has called all through
the Old Testament.
He's called the deliverer.
And at the cross of Jesus Christ, He
made a way.
We have these better promises, who gave Himself
for our sins that He might deliver us
from this present evil world according to the
will of God and the Father.
And it's through the blood of Jesus Christ.
Hezekiah could not stand on the blood of
Jesus Christ.
He stood simply on a promise.
We stand not only on a promise, but
we stand on the blood of Jesus Christ,
that we have the victory over sin, over
temptation, and that God in every battle, He
said, many are the afflictions of the righteous,
and the Lord will deliver them out of
them all.
And it came to pass that night, and
with this I'm going to close.
It came to pass that night, the angel
of the Lord went out and smote in
the camp of the Assyrians one hundred and
eighty-five thousand soldiers, and they arose in
the morning, and behold, they were all dead.
Now, I read a theologian's account of this,
and he said, well, really, there was no
angel of the Lord that night.
There was a festation of one hundred and
eighty-five thousand mice who had bubonic plague
and bit them.
Well, that's a bigger miracle than I'm talking
about.
All I know that the enemy was dead,
the enemy was gone, and of course, Sennacherib
goes home and he's killed by his son.
He's killed in his own temple.
Oh, folks, one day soon, if you will
seek his face and trust him, you're going
to wake up to a miracle.
You're going to wake up.
That night, that night, I honestly believe the
Lord said to tell you this, many of
you that are in the hardest place you've
ever been, you're on the brink of a
miracle.
You are not going down.
You're going to wake up one morning, and
you're going to get one report after another.
God has done this, God has done this,
God has done this, and he's lifted the
load.
Will you stand and give him an offering
of praise?
Stand and give him an offering of praise.
Lord, thank you.
You're going to deliver me from the temptation
that's hounding me.
You're going to deliver me, Lord, from my
financial fears.
You're going to deliver me, O Lord, from
my marital problems.
You're going to deliver me, Lord, because you're
faithful, God, and you have delivered all through
the Bible, and you're no respecter of persons,
so I'm going to lay it out to
you, Jesus.
Deliver me.
Please raise your hands and give him thanks.
Lord, we give you thanks for your faithfulness,
your goodness, and your mercy.
You're a loving heavenly Father.
You're thinking good thoughts for your people today.
You're thinking good thoughts, not thoughts of evil,
not thoughts of judgment.
Thank you, Jesus.
Do you have the hope?
I said, do you have the hope?
Amen.
Lord be to Jesus.
I'd like to make a simple invitation, very
quickly, to those in the balcony here and
even in the annex.
You may be a visitor, or maybe you've
been coming a number of times, or you
may have been coming many times to this
church.
We don't ask people to join this church.
We ask them to come and give themselves
to the Lordship of Jesus Christ.
And if you're here this morning, you walked
in here, and you have not really been
walking tightly, closely with Jesus.
And until you have that communion, until you
have that, you don't know the power that's
available to you.
And it leaves you lonely.
It leaves you sick.
It leaves you depressed.
And I'm inviting you to step out, up
in the balcony.
Go to the stairs on either side.
And in the annex, you can just turn
around and go to the lobby.
The way you came in, there'll be some
ushers there to show you how to get
down the stairs here.
And you can walk down the aisle and
come here.
And here in the auditorium, just come.
I want to pray for you that the
Lord work.
Now, if I ask all those who had
burdens to come, if you tell me you
don't have any burdens, well, forget it.
I won't get into that.
But I'm concerned just for those this morning.
Bishop Pastor David, I really have drifted from
the Lord, or I don't have the relationship
with Jesus that I need and that I
want.
I can't fight this alone anymore.
The Holy Spirit's here to help you, to
be your comforter.
And if you don't understand Jesus, the Holy
Spirit will come and help you to understand
what it's all about.
But he wants you to confess your need.
He said, if you just come to me,
I won't cast you out.
While the orchestra choir is singing something, just
step out of your seat.
In the annex, I invite you, just turn
and go back.
Bring your purse and your belongings with you
and come and you'll be ministered to in
prayer.
We're not asking you to do anything silly.
I don't ask you to say anything.
I'm not asking you to join anything.
We're asking you to come in your need
to Jesus, who's your only strength and hope.
Follow these that are coming.
God bless you.
Come now.
You can come even while I'm talking.
Just a quick word.
The devil is not a mind reader.
He cannot read your mind, but he can
infuse and instill thoughts into your mind.
Principles and powers of demons can whisper to
the mind and plant these terrible seeds of
fear, thoughts of hopelessness and thoughts of despair
and discouragement.
And most of all, the lies that come,
that everything bad in your life is all
because you're just a bad person.
For those who have a hungry heart, for
those who really want Jesus and they really
want change.
The Lord said, take captive of those thoughts.
Will you do that right now?
Capture those thoughts.
Say no.
Say no to them right now and cast
them out and say, no, I will not
believe this.
I will not believe these lies.
Those that are sick and afflicted sometimes and
are told they have a disease.
The first thing the devil says, you're dying.
It's all over.
You lie to about your future, your past,
your present.
You try to bring up everything in your
past, all your failures.
I guess the reason the church so likes
the story, loves the story of David is
because in his failures and foolishness, he had
a repentant heart and always turned to the
Lord.
And that relates to us.
So we take those fears and doubts right
now and say, Jesus, we say right now,
Jesus, I give you my fears.
I give you all the lies.
Erase them.
Give me strength not to accept them or
believe them.
And when they come to take authority and
push them aside.
Now, pray this with me.
Jesus, the Bible says you have good thoughts,
healing thoughts, saving thoughts toward me.
Not evil thoughts, but thoughts for good.
And I thank you for how you're thinking
of me.
Forgive me, Jesus, of my doubts, my unbelief.
I give my sins, my foolishness.
Everything is unlike you.
I give it to you.
I repent of it.
And I trust you now that your goodness
and your love for me is something that
I believe that I can feel and I
can take home with me.
Now, let me pray.
Heavenly Father, these these prayers from the heart
you've heard.
Just as I preached, even the silent prayer
is heard.
Holy Spirit, come and heal so many
that are hurting.
Lord, even those who didn't step out.
There's no Jesus.
I'm hurting so bad.
Holy Spirit, you're the comforter.
We come now.
There's comfort.
That's what this church is about.
It is now, therefore, no condemnation to them
that be in Christ Jesus.
None.
Come, Lord, and lift every load.
Let everybody in the sound of my voice
walk out of here with hope and say,
yes, Jesus.
You were good.
You're merciful, ready to forgive, wanting to heal.
If we would just open up our hearts
and receive it.
Would you just lift up one hand at
least or two hands and say, Lord, I
receive right now.
I receive the goodness of God toward me.
I receive forgiveness.
I receive healing in Jesus name.
Hallelujah.
Thank you, Jesus.
This is the conclusion of the message.