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Father, I thank you that your church, Jesus,
is not built in a flash.
It's built line upon line, little by little,
victory by victory.
And tonight I come just to put one
more brick in the wall that you're building
around your saints.
I ask for the skill to put it
in carefully, to put it in rightly and
solidly, that this truth may remain in the
heart and conscience of the hearers.
I ask you, Lord, for intelligence far beyond
any ability that I may have, that I
may speak simply and clearly and in a
manner that it can be understood in the
inner man by every person that you have
brought into this house.
Jesus, thank you for your manifested presence tonight.
Thank you that you love us so much,
God, that you come and allow us to
experience the freedom of worship and praising you.
Then you come to build into our lives
those things which are going to keep us
and glorify your name until you come.
Give me great grace tonight to speak this
and give great grace to the hearers to
hear it.
Lord, there's going to be a tearing down
of a stronghold in some people's lives.
There's going to be some pain involved with
this.
But Lord, you're the one who said that
you come and the anointing is given to
release those that are bruised in heart.
And I'm believing that bruised hearts are going
to be set free.
I'm believing that those have been captivated by
this issue are going to be released.
And God, the very course of some people's
lives is going to be changed.
And Father, I thank you for it from
the depths of my heart, because you are
the only one, Jesus, who can do this.
And Holy Spirit, you're the only one that
can open this truth and make it a
reality.
If you don't quicken it, it will just
fall to the earth.
Give us ears to hear and hearts to
obey.
I thank you for it in Jesus' mighty
name.
Ephesians chapter 6 in the New Testament, Ephesians
chapter 6, and the title of my message
tonight, or should I say rather the Lord's
message to you, is the first commandment with
a promise.
The first commandment with a promise.
Now there are all types of commandments in
the Old Testament.
Thou shalt not kill, for example, or thou
shalt not steal are simply commandments.
There's no promise with them, other than the
obvious, that you'll not suffer the punishment of
disobedience.
But this is the first one with a
promise.
It's found in Ephesians chapter 6, and I
have only verses 2 and 3.
Honor thy father and mother, which is the
first commandment with promise.
And here's the promise, that it may be
well with thee, and thou mayest live long
on the earth.
I want to read it again.
Honor thy father and mother, which is the
first commandment with promise, that it may be
well with thee, and thou mayest live long
on the earth.
Now I'm going to tear this verse apart
very slowly, because I'm believing that God wants
to build something of this truth into our
lives tonight.
Now the word honor in the Greek text
is to mean to prize something, or to
fix a value upon something.
God is saying, I want you to fix
a value upon your father and upon your
mother, that it may be well with you.
Now the word well means well done.
It's the word actually that Jesus uses in
Matthew chapter 25 verse 21, where he says,
I gave certain skills or talents to a
person who brought it back and had made
increase with what I had imparted into their
life.
And he looked at that servant and said,
well done, good and faithful servant.
And that's the context of this word well.
It just means I may be able to
say to you, well done, at the end
of your course.
The word be means to be made or
formed, to be created from nothing, or to
have something come to pass.
And the last word I want to just
dissect for a moment is the word earth,
which means land, and it also means sometimes
it is a word used as a place
that is fit for fruit bearing.
Now to sum all of this up, I
want to give you my definition of these
two verses of Scripture.
Now this is strictly mine, and I'm trying
to make it applicable to our lives tonight.
And here's how I read this.
Prize or fix a value upon your father
and mother, that you may be formed by
God into a servant over which he may
proclaim, well done.
Fix a value on your father or mother.
God says that I can make you into
something that you are not yet, and at
the end I can look at your life
and say, well done, good and faithful servant.
And that you may long live in a
place that is fit for bearing good fruit,
or you may long dwell there.
Incredible, when you begin to tear it apart
and look at it, it doesn't mean just
that it will be well and you'll live
long on the earth.
I don't think it necessarily applies just to
longevity, that if I honor my father and
mother, I'm going to make it to 85
and then I'm going to die.
No, it's more than that.
That you will long dwell in a place
that is fit for bearing good fruit.
Now, there are some commandments in the Bible
that even God's own people from time to
time are reluctant to obey.
Now, if you go back with me in
the Bible to Matthew chapter 15, I want
to show you this very principle as applies
this commandment of God.
Matthew chapter 15, beginning at verse, the scribes
at the beginning, they came to Jesus and
they got all upset because his disciples didn't
wash their hands before they ate bread.
Now, he answered them about something much more
serious than just washing your hands before you
eat bread.
Chapter 15 of Matthew, verse 3, he said,
why do you also transgress the commandment of
God by your tradition?
For God commanded, saying, honor thy father and
mother, and he that curses father or mother,
let him die to death.
In other words, it was so serious, this
commandment in the sight of God, that in
the Old Testament, he said, if any man
curses his father or mother, he is to
be put to death.
But you say, whosoever shall say to his
father or mother, it is a gift.
By whatsoever thou mightest be profited by him.
In other words, whoever says, I'm under no
obligation to do anything for my father or
my mother.
If I do something for them, it is
strictly out of the generosity of my heart.
It is an absolute gift.
And honor not his father or mother, verse
6, he shall be free.
In other words, he said, you've changed my
commandment.
You've said that there's no necessity of honoring
father and mother, that whatever I do for
my father and mother will just be a
gift out of my own generosity, and I'm
now free from the commandment of God.
And he said, thus you have made the
commandment of God of none effect by your
tradition.
Verse 7, he said, you hypocrites, well did
Isaiah prophesy of you, saying, this people draw
nigh to me with their mouth, and honor
me with their lips, but their heart is
far from me.
For in vain do they worship me, teaching
for doctrines the commandments of men.
Now it's an amazing thing.
It looks as if by the time that
Jesus arise on the scene in the Gospel
of Matthew, that the people just simply didn't
want the burden of disobedience.
Families to some degree, I suppose, had begun
to break down.
Selfishness as a society begins to draw farther
away from God.
Selfishness always begins to take over from self
-sacrifice.
And it became to be a burden, I
suppose, to look after or to honor father
and mother.
And so, many of the people just began
to draw back.
And they began to change the commandment, and
just alter it a little bit, and make
it more palatable for the hearing.
And say, well, let's just change it.
We'll still sort of obey it, but we'll
change the obligation from a commandment to a
suggestion, and ultimately to just the benevolence of
doing whatever we feel like doing.
And Jesus said, but this is a tragedy,
in a sense, of the people who are
approaching me, and not taking seriously some of
the things that I've shared and spoken that
have to be done.
Now, Paul the Apostle, in 2 Timothy chapter
3, said the last days are going to
be characterized by very perilous times.
And the perilous times are going to be
essentially times of selfishness, self-centered lifestyles, people
disobedient, he said, to parents.
Now, that's an incredible thing.
You wouldn't think, well, that's gone all through
history.
And how is that going to characterize the
last days?
No, he said, no, but there's going to
be an increase in this kind of, as
the Bible calls it, lawlessness.
And there are going to be a people
who have without natural affection.
And the word in the Greek text means
family affection.
There are going to be a people who
are disobedient to parents.
There's going to be a breakdown of the
family as it is as God ordained the
family to be.
Society is going to begin to move away
from God's order.
Every man will begin to do what is
right in his own sight, and natural family
affection will begin to die.
And this will be a perilous time.
It is a perilous day when we see
families breaking apart, when we see the very
structure of the family under attack in our
generation.
We can be sure this is a sign
that we are living in perilous times.
There are strong movements underfoot now in society
itself to change the very definition of family.
And with the change of that definition, you're
going to be sure, and it's under the
guise of tolerance, but you're going to be
sure once the definition is adequately changed, there
will be an intolerance for the original God
-given definition of the family.
Being a father and a mother and the
children in subjection to their father and mother,
and such and so forth.
Now, the prophet Malachi, just go backwards in
your Bible to the last book in the
Old Testament, just only a few pages, and
it's in chapter 4.
God was speaking through the prophet Malachi, and
he's talking about the coming of the great
and dreadful day of the Lord.
Now, we know this scripture was fulfilled initially,
at least with the coming of John the
Baptist.
Because the apostle said to Jesus, well, doesn't
the scripture say that Elijah's got to come
first before Christ is going to return?
He said, well, I'm telling you that Elijah
has already come.
He's talking about this initial fulfillment, but I
believe this is something that God did just
prior to Christ's coming through John, but it's
also something that the Holy Spirit has to
do in every heart of every believer before
God can truly visit with his life-changing
power.
And he says in chapter 4, verse 5,
he said, Behold, I send you Elijah the
prophet before the coming of the great and
dreadful day of the Lord.
And he shall turn the heart of the
fathers to the children, and the heart of
the children to their fathers, lest I come
and smite the earth with a curse.
Now, this is my interpretation of how this
verse could apply to you and me.
I will send a message to you which
must be heard before I come.
Now, the message I send to you will
turn your heart back to something or someone
which you have rejected.
And if you don't hear this message, my
coming will smite your fruitful place with destruction.
He said to Malachi, the Lord said to
Malachi, I'm going to come, but before I
come, I'm going to send a message.
And the message that I send has got
to turn the people's hearts back to God's
established order beginning in the home, in the
family.
And he said, if it doesn't happen when
I do come, I will smite the earth
with a curse.
That's an incredible warning, an incredible thing written
in the scriptures.
My heart's crying when I read this, I
say, oh God, I understand now that the
true ministry that stands in the name of
Jesus Christ and says, I have called to
God to prepare your heart so that Christ
may come and dwell within you has got
to turn your heart back again to some
things that we may not want to look
at.
There are some things in all of our
lives that might be unpleasant to look at,
some places that we don't want to go,
some calls to obedience that might be hard
to obey.
But the Lord said, if I'm going to
come, if I'm going to bring you into
a fruitful place, you've got to be able
to hear this.
There are certain orders that have to come
back into the church, the nation, and of
course, the Christian life above all else.
Now, go with me back in the Old
Testament to the book of Exodus now, chapter
15.
I'll talk a little bit about the children
of Israel.
Now, this is right after they were set
free from 400 years of bondage.
God sent a message, and he sent it
through two messengers, Moses and Aaron, and they
stood in front of Pharaoh, the most powerful
king at that time in that part of
the world, with a simple message, let my
people go.
And he hardened his heart against that message,
and because of the hardening of his heart,
all types of destruction and depravity began to
come into his own nation.
Ultimately, it culminated with such judgment coming upon
him that he was forced, and the people
were forced to release the children of Israel
into freedom.
The Bible says that they went through an
impossible scene.
God took them through powerfully, and they sang
songs of great deliverance.
That's where Miriam and Aaron sang the song
of God sending Pharaoh and his chariots into
the depth of the sea, and it was
a marvelous deliverance.
I suppose it's a type of you and
I when we come to Christ.
The devil had us in his grip, but
God sent a word.
He sent it through somebody.
It could have been a friend at work.
It could have been a sermon you heard
in church.
In some cases, it's just Christ himself, through
the Holy Spirit, coming and speaking into the
heart and revealing himself to somebody who's in
desperate straits and looking for God, looking for
a way to freedom.
And you and I found freedom in Christ,
and we walked through and out of the
grip of darkness, and walked through the impossible
places of captivity, and we found that the
devil himself could not hold us, because the
hand of God was on us.
And we come into the house of the
Lord like we are here tonight, and we
sing the songs of Zion.
We talk about Pharaoh being drowned in the
sea, and we know and understand that we're
in the hand of God now, and nothing
can stop us.
Nothing can stop the plan of God that
he has destined for our lives.
The Bible tells us in Exodus 15, beginning
of verse 22, that the children of Israel
were only a few days into the journey
when they were confronted with water that was
too bitter to drink.
So Moses brought Israel from the Red Sea,
and they went out into the wilderness of
shore.
And they went three days into the wilderness
and found no water.
And when they came to Marah, they could
not drink of the water of Marah, for
they were bitter.
And therefore, the name of it was called
Marah.
And the people murmured against Moses and said,
what shall we drink?
You know, sometimes in the Christian life, we
get only a few steps from our salvation
and find ourselves in a very bitter place.
We find ourselves, we say, oh God, this
is living water, just like you said to
Isaiah.
You said you're going to pour out upon
me, and you're going to cleanse me and
wash me.
And I feel like those in the banquet
feast in John chapter 7, when Jesus, you
said, if anyone thirsts, let him come to
me and drink it.
I've come, and the water is so good.
You remember when you first come to Christ,
how good the water is?
How good the promises are?
How good it is to go to sleep
at night knowing that heaven is your destiny?
Knowing that God's got you in the palm
of his hand?
Knowing that none of your enemies, yes, you
might be struggling against hell itself, but there's
the inner knowledge that no power of evil
that's formed against you is going to prosper.
You now have the power to condemn every
tongue that rises against you in judgment.
And you come to the house of God,
and it's so exciting because you say, oh
God, the water is so sweet.
The water is so sweet, it's so sweet.
After years of abuse, and years of lies,
and years of struggling and suffering under the
lashing tongue of the devil, finally I'm in
a place of sweet water.
And one day you come so soon and
early into your journey, you come into the
house of God, and all of a sudden
here's some water put before you.
And it's, oh God, how can you expect
me to drink this?
Lord, this is so bitter, this is a
bitter place.
Why did you so soon have to bring
me to this bitter place?
You see, there was a time happening here.
God says, yes, I'm going to bring you
out of Egypt, I'm going to show you
my power, but before we can progress, before
I can take you into the land of
everything I promised you, I've got to take
you through these bitter places.
It's part of your growth, because if this
doesn't get out of your heart, I'm not
ever going to be able to plant you
in a fruitful place.
Everything I begin to do in your life,
this bitterness that's not dealt with, is going
to come and strangle it.
And my coming, which should be a blessing,
ends up being to you a curse in
a sense, because nothing grows.
Nothing ever comes to fruition.
It's planted, but it doesn't grow, because there's
a bitterness in you.
There's a root, and that root is deep,
it goes right through your loins, it's part
and fabric of everything you are, and everything
I plant within you, this root will come
and work its way around it, and in
the end will choke it out.
And my coming, which should have been a
blessing, ends up being a curse, until this
is dealt with in your life.
And so He brought them to this water,
and it was a type of what happens
in the Christian life when we come to
Christ.
Some people never want to deal with the
bitter water.
They never want to go to these difficult
places.
They just look at the pool and just
try to pass it by.
But you can't pass it by.
It is something that has to be dealt
with, or it will choke the very life
of Christ out of you.
Bitter water, too difficult to drink.
I know exactly what some are thinking tonight.
You've read a scripture that said it's the
first commandment of the promise.
You said, I'm to honor my father and
my mother.
But tell me, Pastor, how do I honor
a father and mother who abandoned me?
Tell me how to honor a father and
mother who beat me.
How do I honor a father and mother
who abused me, physically or verbally?
And folks, I'm not minimizing it, because I
know in some of your lives, because I've
heard the stories, the depth of the pain.
The depth of the wounding.
The physical, the sexual abuse that occurred in
some cases in your own house.
The verbal abuse of a drunken father or
mother, or just an angry person who just
constantly is speaking death into your life.
Tell me, how do I honor a father
or mother who I never have known, or
never took an interest in my life?
There will be some here tonight who could
say, Pastor, you're telling me to honor a
man I don't even know who he is.
I never met him.
My mother was single when I was born,
or my father took off before I was
born, or when I was just a child.
I don't even know who my father is.
I've never gotten a birthday card.
I've never heard from him at Christmas.
He never calls.
I don't even know who he is.
And you are asking me tonight to honor
him.
You're going to have to tell me how
I do this, because otherwise I'm never going
to be able to get away from this.
And the people looked at Moses, and they
were so upset that they began to murmur
against Moses.
And they began to say, Look, you bring
us out of Egypt, and you bring us
to this place, and show us this pool
of water.
You tell us now how we're going to
drink this.
It's not possible.
It's too bitter to drink it.
And it's true.
There are some situations here that are so
awful, that in your natural strength, you'll never
be able to deal with this.
It's impossible.
You can't drink it.
You look down.
The memories come flooding back.
You're asking me to honor somebody that traveled
down the hall at midnight and abused me.
You're asking me to do these things.
I'll never be able to do it.
The memories are too bitter.
But he said, Moses cried to the Lord,
and the Lord showed him a tree.
And when he cast the tree into the
waters, the waters were made sweet.
And there he made them a statute and
an ordinance, and there he proved them.
And God said, There's only one way this
will ever happen in your life.
I'm going to show you the power of
the cross.
At the cross, Christ said, I myself suffered
the wrath of my father.
You have to understand, the wrath of God
was poured out on him.
Everything that you and I have ever deserved
was poured out on Christ.
I'm comforted by the fact, quite often, that
everything that we will ever have to experience,
he experienced.
The wrath of his father came upon him.
Incredible when you think of it.
And Christ made a determination to honor his
father, even though he knew he had to
suffer his father's wrath before he would be
raised on the third day from the dead.
And it's only when the power of the
cross is applied to these areas of our
lives can they ever be made sweet.
It's in the power of the victory that
Christ won on Calvary that you and I
can enter into that victory.
When he rose from the dead, he truly
took captivity captive.
He truly took every memory captive.
He truly took the weakness of the human
heart captive.
He truly took every lie of the devil
captive.
And he gave the Bible's gifts unto man.
He gave us the power, the Scripture says,
to those who believe on him.
He gave us the power to become the
sons and daughters of God.
He gave us everything we need to triumph
and to do what God asks us to
do in these areas.
To do this in our own strength is
impossible.
How could...
I know it's to ask an impossibility to
ask anyone here to drink such bitter water.
It's only when we apply the power of
Calvary, the power of God, the promises of
God, that we will ever find the strength
to be obedient to these areas of our
lives.
Then he gave a promise.
Verse 26, he said, If you will diligently
hearken to the voice of the Lord your
God, and will do that which is right
in his sight, and will give ear to
his commandments and keep his statutes, I will
put none of these diseases upon you which
I have brought upon the Egyptians, for I
am the Lord that healeth thee.
Now there's a promise for obedience.
God said, if you will obey me in
this, I will put none of these diseases
upon you that you have seen come upon
the Egyptians.
I will set you free from all of
the cancerous hatred, from all of the blind,
awful words that are spoken about family.
I will set you free from the wounds
that are plaguing and driving all of this
society from pillar to post looking for happiness
and looking for peace.
God said, if you will obey me, I
will take these things off of you.
I will set you free.
I will give you a testimony of grace
and glory.
I will cause you to stand.
You will have such a testimony of life
if you will obey me in this and
allow me to give you the strength to
perform what I ask you to do.
Now the most recent disease in their memory
would be the loss of the firstborn of
each family because of the stubborn refusal of
Pharaoh to hear the word of God.
Imagine that the word of God came and
they wouldn't obey it in Egypt.
And they would be so, so remember.
God, I remember the wailing and the anguish
as every house had a dead child.
And usually the firstborn was a symbol of
the continuance of your family lineage, your strength.
Every house lost its strength in other words.
The lineage was destroyed because there was a
refusal.
The word of God came.
The instruction was simple, let them go.
But Pharaoh wouldn't let them go.
And I think of the song that the
children of Israel were singing on the other
side of the Red Sea.
I think of them sitting around the campfires
at night saying, How foolish of Pharaoh.
How insane.
The word was so simple and he just
wouldn't obey it.
He could have saved his family.
Unspeakable sorrow.
He could have saved the destruction of the
fruitfulness of the nation.
There was fruit, there was livestock, there was
provision.
It was all destroyed.
Because of simple stubbornness to hear a simple
instruction.
Let the people go.
And he wouldn't do it.
And I can see them just after they're
set free and then a very short time
later they're sitting around the same campfire, but
now they're around the pool of Marah.
And that pool of bitterness in a sense
is where they're being given the same instruction
that Pharaoh was given.
The same word is coming to them.
Now, I want you to hear me on
this.
I'm drawing an inference from the Scriptures, which
is not specifically stated, but it does have
an application in every one of our lives.
You see, the question arises, how do we
respond when we sit in Pharaoh's seat and
the word of God comes to us saying,
Let them go.
It's an incredible thing.
We can see the foolishness of Pharaoh.
We sing about it.
We even clap our hands and worship about
it in Times Square Church.
But how do we respond when God's word
comes to us and says, Those that kept
you in bondage, those that wounded you, those
that made your life hard, bitter bondage, let
them go.
And now we are sitting in Pharaoh's seat.
You see, those who have not let them
go, you are now sitting in Pharaoh's seat.
You are Pharaoh.
And the word of God comes to you
and says, Listen, yes, I know you were
hurt.
Yes, I know you were held in bondage.
Yes, I know that you were betrayed.
Yes, I know you were abandoned.
Yes, I know you were not provided for.
But you are now living in a higher
place than you used to live.
You are now in the hand of God.
So I say to you, let them go.
Let them go.
Release the debt that they owe you.
Let them go.
Set them free.
Honor them.
Let them go.
And so now we have a choice, just
like Pharaoh.
We can obey and yield to the word
of God or we can harden our hearts
and watch the provision of our land taken
away.
Watch our cattle die.
Watch our families go into the same spiral
of destruction that we have come from.
Verse 27 He said, They came to Elim,
where there were twelve wells of water and
three score and ten palm trees, and they
encamped there by the water.
After the tree was applied to the water,
God said, If you will obey me, I
will bring you to a never-ending supply
and I will give you life and give
you peace.
Now I know that there are people here
tonight that say, Pastor, you're just going to
have to get more specific with me.
How do I honor a father or mother
who has already died?
Or is too far away or in some
place where I can't get to for any
kind of face-to-face reconciliation?
Tell me, how can I honor them?
Here's the best way.
This is only an illustration.
You do it whatever way you have to.
I think maybe someday you can just sit
down and write all the things that you
feel that they owe you and were never
done for you.
Then take it, tear it up, offer it
to God and just throw it away.
And say, I've released the dead.
How do you know when the dead is
released?
Well, first of all, it's when you stop
rehearsing the matter.
When you stop telling everybody you meet how
rotten your father and mother were.
You stop rehearsing it.
That's how you know you've let the dead
go.
When you stop talking about it.
When your face doesn't get all twisted every
time you start talking about...
You see, those who don't, my experience has
been those who don't release the dead always
seem to struggle with authority all their lives.
Never trust any authority.
A woman goes into a marriage, her husband
has some little failure and she says, you're
just like my father.
You ever said that to your spouse?
You're just like my mother.
You want to know why you said that?
Because you've not released the dead.
You're still rehearsing the matter.
In your spirit, you're not letting it go.
And you see, what should be the blessing
of God is a destruction.
The Lord says, until this is dealt with
in your heart, my coming, instead of bringing
fruit, ends up being a curse in what
should be bringing life into your heart and
your home.
Those who don't forgive run the risk of
reliving the very thing they despise within their
own families.
I've seen it over and over and over
again.
Job said it in Job 3.25, the
thing which I greatly feared has come upon
me.
I'll tell you why it happens.
I think the principle is fairly simple.
And it's simply this.
The direction in which you are looking is
most often that which you will become.
If you are motivated as a Christian to
change just because you don't want to be
like somebody else, if that's your motivation, you
will more than likely become exactly like that
person.
It's an incredible thing.
I've seen this so many times now, I
know it's not coincidence.
I've had people come in for counseling and
say, I hate my father, my mother, whatever
is my uncle, I hate that person and
I'm becoming just like them.
The very thing I hate I'm becoming.
You see folks, they're becoming it because that's
the direction they're looking in.
Not looking to be like Christ, but to
be looking to be unlike someone else.
Folks, if you want to grow in Christ,
the Christian motivation to move forward must always
be to like Christ and not to be
unlike someone else.
You've got to release the dead.
You've got to let it go and then
look to Jesus, the Bible says, the author
and finisher of your faith.
And say, Lord, I want to be like
you.
I release everybody that's hurt me in the
past.
I let them all go.
Family, husbands, wives, children, whatever the situation is,
I let it go and I look to
you now.
Because you are now the source of my
hope, my life and my strength.
And everything I'm going to be, I want
to be like you.
How do I honor my father and mother
if they're still living?
You can show active kindness.
Galatians 6.10 says, as we have opportunity,
let us do good to all men, especially
to those who are of the household of
faith.
I'm sure your father and mother has a
birthday.
If they're still living, you can send a
card.
You could write a letter and tell them
what God is doing for you.
Whether or not it's reciprocated is not the
issue.
We don't necessarily...
God didn't say, honor your father and mother
if they've done everything right.
He just said, honor them.
And that was a commandment.
That it may be well with you.
That you may live long upon the earth.
There's so many things you can do.
So many active kindness to begin to turn
this whole thing around.
Even if it doesn't turn around your original
relationship with your mother and father, it will
change your family relationship.
The Bible says, whatever you sow, that's what
you're going to reap.
And you can be sure that if you
choose to honor your father and mother, that
your children will honor you.
They will arise up as the Scripture says,
and they will call you blessed.
Lastly, you can take the caring of your
parents as a holy charge from the Lord.
Because really that's what it is.
Colossians 3.23 says, whatever you do, do
it heartily as unto the Lord, and not
unto men.
You take it as a holy charge.
Say, God you spoke this into my life.
And you told me that if I would
do this, Lord you would bless me.
Now I've been a teenager.
And I've done teenage things.
Which I suppose could have really alienated me
from my mother and father.
I was a rebellious teenager.
Said things I shouldn't have said.
Defied authority I shouldn't have defied because of
my own ignorance and lack of understanding of
God's ways.
Then I made it worse.
I got saved.
And didn't have a lot of discretion.
I was sort of like a bull in
a china shop.
Come home with good news.
Hey, guess what?
You're all going to hell.
You know?
My Christian testimony was not very intelligent.
And I made it worse.
Even as a Christian.
But I thank God with all of my
heart tonight.
That along the road reading the word of
God, I've come across some of these truths.
And God began to speak to me about
these things years ago.
And by grace began to move me in
the direction of making past wrongs right.
And building a bridge where I could.
And being reconciled where it was possible.
I came back from Nigeria to find that
both of my parents are gravely ill.
Will probably or possibly lose them both in
the very near future.
I was home recently and it's amazing It's
amazing to be reconciled.
It's amazing to be able to hold your
mother and hold your father and say I
love you.
And have them say the same thing back.
It's amazing to have taken steps and I
didn't take them just because they're ill.
It took them a long time ago.
And of course they're very gracious and they
took steps in my direction as well.
There's such a healing coming into my whole
family.
I've not done everything right as a father.
I've made some mistakes as a Christian.
I've shared many of them openly here in
this church.
I've shared them in the pastor's conference.
And my children could legitimately look at my
life and find fault with how I represented
God before them.
Some of the things I did.
Times that I lost my temper.
They could be justified in holding little grievances
against me.
I got some cards lately from a couple
of my children that have astounded me at
what they had to say in those cards.
My daughter wrote to me and she said,
Dad, I find no fault in you.
She said, you're a righteous man in and
out of the pulpit of God.
And I want to be like you for
the rest of my life.
Just an I love you card I guess.
I had one of my sons write to
me and say the very same thing recently.
I was talking to my wife about it
and I said, what have I ever done
to deserve this?
That my children could rise up and say
such words.
Then I began to realize I made a
choice to honor my father and my mother.
I made a choice, even though we disagreed
on issues of even God at times and
the truth of God as I see it,
I made a choice which is a higher
choice.
To honor my father because he is my
father.
And to honor my mother because she is
my mother.
And to honor God by obeying him.
And I see life and fruit in every
area of my home.
I see God moving in an unprecedented way
in my children, my family.
I see the coming of Christ bringing fruit
and life everywhere I turn and everything it
seems that God gives me to touch prospers.
And it all comes from some basic truths
that early on in your Christian walk we
are confronted with and are given the choice
to obey or disobey.
In the book of Numbers, I just want
to read it to you.
Please, you don't have to turn there.
In Numbers chapter 6, the Lord spoke to
Moses and he said, I want you to
tell Aaron and his sons to bless the
children of Israel.
And he said, I want to bless in
particular those who have my name on them.
I want you to pronounce a blessing on
them.
Now, that means those that have not taken
my name in vain.
That doesn't mean you swear the Lord's name.
That was really an old religious teaching.
It means you don't take the name of
Christ and then make it a worthless thing
in your life.
No, but those that have taken my name
and are intertwined with me and allowing me
to work with them.
He said, I want you to pronounce a
blessing.
So, I want to pronounce that blessing on
you tonight and I'm going to give an
altar call in a moment.
And I'm going to speak this blessing over
your life.
And here's the blessing.
The Lord bless thee.
This is the first part of it.
And keep thee.
The Lord make His face to shine upon
thee and be gracious to thee.
The Lord lift up His countenance upon thee
and give thee peace.
This is the first blessing.
God says, those that have my name and
are walking in truth are going to be
kept by the power of God.
The Apostle Peter said, we are kept by
Him to a salvation that is soon to
be revealed.
Even though for a season we are in
heaviness through the trials that we have to
face.
But those that make the choice to walk
God's way, God says, I'm going to keep
you.
I'm going to keep you.
It's an amazing thing.
The second blessing, He said, my face will
shine upon you and I'll be gracious to
you.
In other words, I will not turn my
back to you, but I'll turn my face
to you.
You'll see me face to face.
You'll understand me.
You'll have an intimate relationship with me.
And I will be very, very gracious to
you.
Beloved, I've got to tell you, God's been
very gracious to me.
Extremely gracious.
If I would have been God, I'd be
on the heap a long time ago.
Thank God I was not God in my
own life.
God's been very gracious to me.
In spite of my mistakes, I have had
it in my heart to do right and
to trust God for the power to do
it.
And I've seen His face and I've begun
to understand some things about Him.
He's been extremely gracious to me.
And the word gracious really means favored and
provided for.
God says, I will favor you.
I will know where you are.
I will raise your life up to be
used for my glory and I will give
you all the provision you will ever need
to do what I call you to do.
You'll never lack of anything that you need
to do what I've been called you to
do.
Acts 5.32 Peter stood before the religious
people of his day.
They had taken him and cast him, what
the Bible says, into the common prison.
I like to call that common prison the
prison of bitterness.
That's probably the most common prison in society
today.
It's bitterness and unforgiveness.
If you would want to characterize or find
a sin that underlies probably most of everything
that goes on in society today, you'd find
that very common sin, that common prison of
unforgiveness and bitterness.
Especially in light of the breakdowns of family
that we've experienced perhaps in this last few
decades.
But Peter stood.
And he said, he was released by an
angel.
A messenger came and he was released from
the common prison.
And he was found shortly after standing and
preaching in the temple.
The words of eternal life.
And he stood and spoke about Christ.
And he said, we are witnesses of these
things and so is the Holy Spirit whom
God has given to those who obey Him.
Beloved, I want to tell you something.
When you make the choice to obey God,
you will be released from the common prison.
And you will be a witness to your
generation of a releasing power of a man
or woman who can't be held by any
of the common prisons of this generation.
And God will cause you to stand before
your generation and be a testimony.
And say, yes, Christ rose from the dead
and I am a witness because I can't
be held in the common prisons of my
generation.
The Holy Spirit has been given to me
because I've made choices along the way I've
chosen to obey God.
And lastly, the Lord lift up His countenance
upon thee and give thee peace.
Peace.
There's a passage of Scripture that says, mark
the perfect man or the man in which
the work of God is perfected for the
end of that man is peace.
Paul says, be careful for nothing but in
everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let
your requests be known to God.
Be careful for nothing means don't hold back
from what God is asking you to do.
That's what it means to be careful.
Don't hold back.
Just come to God and let your requests
be known to Him.
And the peace of God which passes all
understanding shall keep your hearts and minds through
Jesus Christ.
Finally, brethren, He says, whatsoever things are true
and honest and whatsoever things are just and
whatsoever things are pure and whatsoever things are
lovely and whatsoever things are of good report
if there be any virtue and if there
be any praise think on these things.
Those things which you have both learned and
received and heard and seen in me do
and the God of peace shall be with
you.
Paul says, you've seen me walk in a
certain path and this is an instance when
I can honestly stand before you and say,
beloved, you have seen that I have chosen
to walk in a certain path and God
has been with me.
And I challenge you now in the name
of Christ to not hold back from doing
what God is asking you to do so
that Christ can come and bless you.
That Christ can come and empower you and
set your family and your whole thinking on
a different course and release you from the
common captivity of this generation.
And the God of peace shall be with
you.
Christ said to Ezekiel, I will give you
a new mind.
I will put a new spirit in you.
I will be your God.
You will be my people.
He said, those who walk my way you're
going to be called the restorer of things
that have been broken down.
You're going to be called the repairer of
the breach and the restorer of all things.
God said, I'm going to do something in
you.
I'm going to set you free.
Because tonight you're going to make the choice
to obey me.
Hallelujah.
I see in my spirit people released from
this common prison tonight.
This common prison of unforgiveness.
This common prison of bitterness.
This common prison of rehearsing old grievances.
This common prison of disobeying God under the
guise of, well, I'm justified to disobey God.
No, we are never justified to disobey God.
This common prison that the devil loves because
he knows that if he can keep you
there he can rob you of the blessings
that God wants to bring into your life.
Tonight, by God's grace I want to challenge
you to be reconciled to every man and
woman who lives on the face of the
earth.
Be reconciled.
Don't let yourself be robbed any longer.
Be reconciled to your mother and father.
Be reconciled to your brothers and sisters.
Be reconciled to every race and color and
culture and language.
Be reconciled.
Paul was able to stand with power before
those that accused him because he said, I
have a conscience that's free of offense towards
God and man.
I am free.
I've obeyed God.
I've released the dead.
I've let everyone go that owes me anything.
And because of it, God is able to
come and bless him and enable him to
impact not only his generation but ours as
well.
Gave him words which weren't his own.
Gave him an intelligence so far beyond his
natural ability.
Gave him understanding because he had a face
-to-face relationship with Jesus Christ.
For some who are here tonight, this is
one of the greatest calls you will ever
get.
You can't go farther until you've dealt with
this bitter water.
It's going to mean some letter writing, some
phone calls.
It's going to mean some letting go.
It's going to mean stopping speaking some old
stories.
One of the very first things when I
started to share my testimony years ago, the
Holy Spirit told me, He said, don't ever
dishonor your father and your mother in your
testimony.
Not every father or mother does everything right.
And the Lord said, you won't do everything
right either with your children.
Don't ever dishonor them.
I thank God that I've obeyed that.
Thank God with all my heart.
Oh God, thank you.
God, thank you so much.
Thank you so much.
You shall know the truth and the truth
shall set you free.
It's wonderful that you're making this choice tonight.
And you're going to struggle with it.
But you'll never take it up again because
tonight you're deciding to do it God's way.
And God says, I'm going to put the
tree in your bitter water.
I'm going to show you my power.
You trust Him tonight.
Trust Him because the devil will want you
to take that old bitterness up when you
leave here.
But you don't have to now.
And the Holy Spirit's going to tell you
what to do.
Now, if your mother and father are dead,
there's nothing you can do.
Just stop telling this story.
But if they're still alive, and you know
where they are, you can write a card.
You can send a letter.
And you don't relive the old grievance.
I forgive you for and list of all
the stuff.
You don't even have to say, I forgive
you.
Just tell them what God's doing in your
life.
Tell them, I love you.
Even if you have to say it by
faith.
And I thank God for you because you're
my father.
I thank God for you because you're my
mother.
Amazing.
It will be well with you.
You will live long in a place of
fruitfulness, God said.
It's going to be well with you.
Let's all pray together, those who have come
to this altar.
Lord Jesus, I have heard your word tonight.
And God, it's beyond my power to obey
you.
But I believe with all my heart that
tonight as I make the choice to release
my mother and father from the debt they
owe me.
I make the choice to honor them as
you have commanded me to.
That you will give me the power to
break the curse of bitterness that these things
have planted in my life.
I thank you Lord for loving me enough
to bring me to this place and to
confront me with these issues.
Because you want to plant absolute divine life
within my heart.
Tonight, I take all my list of everything
that my mother and father or anybody else
owes me.
I tear it up and I offer it
to you.
I ask you Jesus to take this out
of my heart and give me the freedom
that I ask you for tonight from all
of these issues of my heart.
I release my father.
I release my mother from anything they owe
me.
I forgive them because you have forgiven me.
I thank you Lord that you are going
to bring change into my home, into my
family, into my life.
You said you would bless me.
You said it would go well with me.
I would live long in a fruitful place.
I believe it.
I receive it.
Consider it done in Jesus' name.
Amen.
I actually
pronounce this blessing on you.
I want you to hear it now.
The Lord bless you and keep you.
The Lord make His face to shine upon
you and be gracious to you.
The Lord lift up His countenance upon you
and give you peace.
God, I thank you for what you have
done tonight in this house.
I thank you Lord that you have hand
-picked us to hear this word tonight.
Thank you Lord that you are setting people
free.
I thank you that there's going to be
reconciliation.
I thank you mighty God there's going to
be shouts of joy even tonight when people
go home and they can say I'm free,
I'm free, I'm free, I'm free, I'm free.
I thank you God you're going to turn
the hearts of fathers to children as well
as children to fathers.
God you're going to turn some hearts.
You're going to bring some children home.
God you're going to do things that can
only be done by your hand.
Lord we entrust it to you, we believe
it God that you're going to do these
things.
Lord we thank you that you are true
to your word.
When we obey you God you say there's
a promise with this obedience.
God we receive it, I receive it tonight
and I thank you for it.
I thank you mighty God.
I thank you Lord that it's as if
my children don't even see my failings.
Lord you have given me favor in the
sight of my own children and I thank
you God from the very depths of my
heart.
I thank you Lord that you will give
the mothers and fathers your favor in the
sight of their children in spite of past
mistakes.
Lord you'll bring the hearts of the children
home because many here have made right decisions
tonight and their hearts have been made right
in relationship to their own parents.
God thank you, God thank you.
We thank you for the freedom tonight.
We thank you God, we praise you.
We bless you Lord.
We bless you God.
We bless you Jesus.
God we bless you.
This is the conclusion of the message.