This message is one of the Times Square
Church Pulpit series.
It was recorded in the sanctuary of Times
Square Church in Manhattan, New York City.
Other tapes are available by writing WORLDCHALLENGE PO
BOX 260 LINDALE, TEXAS 75771 or calling 903
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None of these messages are copyrighted and you
are welcome to make copies for free distribution
to friends.
I'm not going to be speaking to the
whole church this morning.
I'm going to be speaking to a select
few, and yet the message is for all
in a way that we're learning something about
God's heart toward people who fall, people who
backslide, people who are down, people who have
been shipwrecked or ruined.
My message this morning, God doesn't give up
on his children who fall.
God doesn't give up on his children who
fall.
Now, I presume that many of you here
have never fallen, and I presume that you
will never fall, that you'll be faithful to
the Lord, you'll love the Lord, but you
know people who have fallen, and this is
a message that you need to bring to
them.
I trust that you absorb it and take
it into your spiritual being, and this will
be ammunition that you can use, and I
hope it will mold your own thinking and
how you approach those people who have fallen,
backslidden, those that might have known the Lord
and now they could be out on the
streets or whatever.
We pray this morning that God will use
this word.
God doesn't give up on his children who
fall.
Let's pray.
I'm so glad, Lord, that you don't give
up on your children who fail you, who
turn to the world or go back into
sin.
You do not give up on them.
And Lord, there are people sitting in this
church right now who have fallen.
You made it clear to me that you
can design a message, prepare a message even
for one person, somebody that can travel across
the world or across the country and place
them in this church this morning and cause
the whole congregation to sit and listen while
you deal with one individual.
I've seen that happen over and over again.
Lord, I don't know who you're speaking to
this morning, but in a way you're speaking
to all of us and our attitude toward
those who have fallen.
Lord, let us know something of your heart
this morning.
Touch me, anoint me, Lord, sanctify me, purge
me by the power of the blood of
Jesus Christ, and give us ears to hear
what the Spirit of the Lord is saying.
In Jesus' name, amen.
Now, I grieve over the many children of
God who have been falling away from Christ
in these last days.
It's a tremendous grief to my heart.
It's a grief to any Christian and especially
to any pastor.
Christians have fallen back into sin in every
generation.
Adam, the first man, fell into sin.
And ever since Adam, God's children have been
falling away from grace, away from God, away
from Christ.
Many who have been delivered out of the
kingdom of darkness return to the kingdom of
darkness, back to their old sins.
And almost daily, now somebody brings me a
report of another child of God who has
slipped and fallen.
And some go back to drugs, some go
back to alcohol, some go back to pornography.
They go back to their old darkened streets.
And there are some that, when they bring
the report to me and I hear it,
I say, oh no, not him or not
her.
I thought he was so strong, he seemed
to be doing so well, wanting to do
so right before God.
How did it happen?
Or I'll hear of some sister in the
Lord who has fallen.
I say, I can't believe that because there
seems to be such energy of Christ and
such a love for the Lord.
How did it happen?
Suddenly they're gone, they have fallen, they've turned
their backs on the Lord, so to speak,
and they're back in their old habits.
And I've had to shake my head and
disbelieve and say, I can't comprehend that.
Now, it's true that this end-time generation
that we're in right now faces greater temptation,
greater stress than any past generation because the
Bible even says evil men and seducers shall
grow worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived.
The Bible also predicts wickedness shall abound, and
that means increase and multiply.
And we're in a time now where it's
reached a point called critical mass that's spinning
out of control, literally spinning out of control.
And we see a time now when new
kinds of sin and seductions and temptations are
being introduced that you and I never even
dreamed of or heard of just twenty years
ago.
The devil is getting very subtle, the seductions
are getting stronger, the temptations stronger.
You know, yesterday, Saturday, I was down at
Isaiah House and with Mark and a few
workers looking out the third-store window over,
you can see 42nd Street and up 8th
Avenue, and all I saw was grime, dirt.
I saw pushers on the corner of 8th
Avenue and 42nd Street pushing their drugs to
derelict human beings that could hardly walk.
And I saw later when I went out
in the street, I had gone just a
little bit and I saw two alcoholics and
one was trying to help the other and
he was just, blood was just flowing out
of his mouth, he was vomiting blood all
over the streets.
And the other guy who didn't know whether
to lean him over, another alcoholic came along
and said, stand him up.
And those poor men, they were all coughing,
all diseased, all absolutely just a few weeks
probably away from death in the grave.
And on the third floor you look up
8th Avenue and you see these cheap little
porno theaters where AIDS-infected girls go through
their boring routines, they're bored, many of them
very unattractive, and you see these poor souls
going into these porno houses and it's heartbreaking.
In fact, it's like an image out of
Dante's Inferno, a literal vision of hell, and
it just turns me off, it's a depressing
thing.
And yet, one young man who just took
a fall this past week or two said
to, I think it was to Mark or
to one of our workers, but you don't
understand, you've never been on the streets.
You see grime and you see dirt and
this turns you off, but that's temptation to
us.
That's temptation.
I've never been able to understand it because
I have served the Lord since I was
a child.
I've not lived on the streets and I've
never been touched with those kinds of temptations.
But here in New York City, those temptations,
they say, are getting stronger and stronger.
I don't comprehend that kind of temptation, but
whatever your temptation is, however the devil can
seduce you in your particular area of seduction,
it is getting stronger, it's getting wider and
it's spreading and causing more and more of
the children of God who have been saved
and converted to fall back into their old
ways.
Last week, I was reading letters that pour
into our office from all over the United
States.
We have, as you know, over 800,000
people on our mailing list and we get
40,000, 50,000 letters in a month.
We sometimes get 10,000 in a week.
And reading some of these letters, it's just
heartbreaking.
And something has happened in the past year,
especially the letters from wives who tell us
that their husbands have just picked up and
ran off, leaving them with their children, taking
off with women half their age.
And now he's backslidden.
One preacher's wife said, my husband, a pastor,
we've been married for over 25 years, now
he's backslidden and he's living with an unsaved
girl half his age.
Pastors running off on their wives, wives running
away from their husbands, and the children caught
in the middle.
One wife wrote, she said, we've been married
for over 20 years, three children, and my
husband, I found out, has been cheating on
me ever since we've been married.
He's now left us and he's living with
some girl, not married, but living with her.
She said, I can't explain the rage that
came over me, but I took it to
the Lord and God took all the rage
out of my heart.
I've forgiven him and now I'm praying for
him to come back.
I'm not going to give up on him
yet.
I believe there's still hope.
Now, most housewives, most of you married ladies
who are sitting here right now, say, no
way, that's a skunk.
There's no way I would ever take a
creep like this back into my home.
And I understand that.
And the same if you're a man and
your wife was promiscuous like this, it would
take some special kind of grace.
You say, no way, he's cheated me all
his life.
He has done things against me and he
doesn't want me.
Let him go.
I'm so glad, though, that God doesn't think
that way.
Because, you see, many of us have turned
to other loves.
Many of us have cheated on God.
And there are some of you sitting here
right now, you have been cheating on the
Lord.
You have fallen into a sin.
And I believe God gave me this message
primarily from my own heart because I have
been rather discouraged lately.
I've been going through a time of discouragement,
not from the ministry, not Times Square Church.
The discouragement is because I have seen so
many.
The letters that are pouring into us of
the backsliding, the turning away from the Lord,
ministers that are falling and people that are
falling.
I hear from my friends from California, from
Texas, from all the United States, when they're
on the telephone and when they visit here
and they have even ten minutes with me,
they say, you remember so-and-so, they'll
name couple after couple that I wouldn't have
known 20 years ago.
On fire for God said, they don't even
go to church now.
They go to one of these super churches
and they go Saturday night.
So they say, we have all day Sunday
to ourselves now.
So they can go boating, they can go
and do their thing, especially in California.
California, the big thing now is Saturday night
church.
So you go and have the whole day
for football, you have the whole day to
yourself.
Go and soothe your conscience on Friday night.
Get a little bit of a 15-minute
sermon on how to cope and then go
out and have ball games.
Do anything you want all day Saturday.
And my friends tell me how grieved they
are, those that are going on with God,
all of their California, their Texas friends and
others in some of these states like Florida,
saying, now we have all day Sunday to
do our own thing.
The zeal of God is gone, falling left
and right.
Coldness setting in of their hearts.
Wanting to go to a church where there's
no convicting message.
Folks, I believe there's some churches that if
Pastor Carter and I went there and preached
some of the sermons and messages we've preached
here of Holy Ghost conviction, preaching against sin,
they'd either run to the altar or have
the congregation get up and run out.
Scared to death.
Many of them not wanting to hear it
because it would ruin their Sunday.
It would ruin their camping trip.
They'd be under conviction all day.
I'm not trying to be facetious, but you
know, I've heard lately of so many backslidings,
so many falling, it discouraged me.
And then it was not only that, but
seeing even in Times Square Church, even in
this church, many Christians who've been saved for
a number of years, and you've had a
past of abuse.
Maybe your father abused you, your mother abused
you.
It could have been verbal abuse, could have
been sexual abuse.
There are others of you that have gone
through terrible situations in your marriages.
You have been wounded by some devil, like
this one I mentioned here, who cheated and
mistreated.
Maybe you were mistreated.
Some of you have carried wounds and hurts
for years.
Some of you are part of a program
here called Restoration in this Church.
It's a good program.
God is blessing it, and many of you
are being helped.
But the thing that concerns me and the
thing that brought some discouragement upon my heart,
and I see some of you that have
been coming here listening.
I've been, we started here almost 10 years
ago, and some of you have been here
10 years.
Some of you have been hearing us preach.
I've been preaching to some of you for
five years, and Pastor Carter's joined me, and
he's preached for at least two years to
you.
And we preach our hearts out to you.
We go to God's Word.
We don't bring you psychology.
We don't bring you something from another man's
head.
We bring it from the throne room of
God.
We pray, and God moves upon us, and
we stand here.
I'm not preaching out of notes right now.
I'm preaching to you out of my heart,
and I'm telling you, the discouragement is that
I see people go year after year, praising
the Lord, raising their hands, talking about victory,
hearing messages on overcoming power of the Holy
Ghost, and yet you still carry the burden
around as though you were in the hand
of the devil rather than the hands of
God.
Rather, almost as though there is no victory,
that you have to go all your lifetime
leaning on somebody, all of your lifetime weeping,
all of your lifetime carrying this burden and
never laying it down, never coming into a
place of victory.
That concerns me.
That, as a pastor, that deeply concerns me,
that you are not, you can have friends
around you, you can have people you call,
you can have support groups.
I'm not against going to counselors if you
get good godly counseling.
Now, if you're getting half Holy Ghost and
half Freud, you're going to be in a
mess.
We got a lot of people using Freud
and the gospel, and all they do is
take Freud and put a little gospel to
it.
And it's nothing but pop psychology, and it's
not going to heal you.
You're just going to have somebody you lean
on for the rest of your life.
And I'm telling you, it's time to start
leaning on Jesus and getting healing.
And that's what this message is about today,
that you can step out of that hurt.
Step out of that because God hasn't given
up on you.
And you're not in the hands of the
devil.
That's what we're going to talk about this
morning.
Especially those who, married couples that are here
right now, you're in a mess in your
home.
You fight all the time.
You don't even believe you're in love with
one another, and all you do is coexist
in the house.
It's like the Cold War.
How many of you had it out this
morning?
And you sit here now, nobody knows, because
both of you smiled, and you maybe even
held hands when you walked in here.
But just wait until you get back in
the car.
And I'm not trying to be cute, but
I'm telling you now, there are people who
go on.
There are some of you who have been
coming to this church for ten years, or
at least five years, and heard all this
gospel.
There's not been any change anywhere.
You haven't been changed.
Your marriage is not improving.
You are saying and speaking the same language
you spoke five years ago.
The same discouragement.
The same...
You just tell everybody about your problem.
You're saying the same thing today you said
five years ago.
And that should not be.
That should not be.
That's not God's plan.
I hear these stories from all of the
United States.
Letters from every state in the Union.
Children of God who love Jesus.
They want to do right, but when you
listen to them talk, you hear the language
of fear.
There's no happiness in Christ.
They live in misery.
And then I'm tempted to ask the question,
God, what's going on?
Certainly all Christians face temptations.
All Christians face trials.
All marriages are tried.
All marriages go through difficulties.
We face persecution and hard times.
But why are so few of God's people
coming into the promised West that God has
promised in His book?
Where is that rest?
Where is that peace?
Where is the victory?
Where is the growth?
When do you move out of that?
Or do you come to Jesus and say,
He has all power.
He has all majesty.
He has all power over the devil.
And then live the rest of your life
in misery.
And make it to be a lie rather
than the truth.
I agree we face more stress.
We face more evil, intention, deception, immorality than
any other generation.
But God has promised us clearly that where
sin abounds, His grace will much more, much
more abound.
That He's made provision for all of these
things.
It didn't catch God unawares that times would
be evil as they are.
God knew it.
He prophesied it.
Now, the devil has a clever strategy to
keep fallen Christians down.
It's the same device he uses to convince
the bruised and wounded Christians that they can
never be totally healed.
And I know that there are some of
you now, you doubt that you will ever
be totally healed.
You've been told or you've been convinced by
somebody or by the devil that you're going
to live the rest of your life carrying
this wound or carrying a hurt that as
long as you live, it will always be
there.
And you might as well go to AA
because that's where they tell you once an
alcoholic, always an alcoholic.
And I don't believe that for a moment.
I believe that the blood of Jesus Christ
has the power to deliver, absolutely deliver from
the memory, from the habit.
No.
And here's the lie of the devil.
You can't go back to God because he's
angry with you now.
You sinned against him.
You can't go back.
In fact, he's permitted me to take back
the power over your life.
You cannot go back.
God really doesn't want you back.
There's no way you can make it up
to him.
And this is the subtle lie of the
devil that is holding millions of fallen Christians,
millions of bachelors and Christians held, holding them
in darkness and fear and anxiety.
The sense that I can never make it
back to God.
I'll never make it up to him.
I'll never measure up.
I have failed him miserably.
I don't even know if he wants me
back.
I've heard some of them say, well, brother
David, you don't meet me on the streets.
And I say, hi, Pastor.
And they're high as they can be.
And then I discovered they used to attend
Times Square Church and they'll hug me and
they still love.
They say, I still love the Lord.
I still love Jesus.
But they're absolutely bound by this lie.
I have grieved him so much.
I have heard him.
And one young man said, brother David, look,
you can preach that.
But you have the slightest idea how low
I've sunk.
You have the slightest idea what I've done.
If you knew what I've done, you wouldn't
even talk to me.
You would never tell me.
In his words, he was saying, you could
never tell me that God can forgive what
I have done.
But I'm here to tell you that God
does not give up on any of his
fallen children.
No matter how low you sunk.
No matter what you have done.
God, by his Spirit, does not give up
on you.
Hallelujah.
I'm going to prove that to you in
the course of the message this morning.
I want to expose this lie here and
now.
And I want to prove to you that
any fallen child of God has not given
up by the Lord.
And I want to prove to you that
he has not given you over to the
power of the devil.
He's not given you into the hands of
Satan.
I'm going to ask that every one of
you here this morning have been bruised and
wounded and discouraged and depressed.
And you've been carrying pain and wound for
so long.
And I'm going to ask you to trust
God to let the word this morning.
No matter how weak your faith may be.
That you are not in the teeth of
the lion.
The devil does not have his teeth on
you.
What you're going through right now is something
you're going to have to come out of
by a step of faith.
And I want you to do it this
morning.
I want you to believe God within the
next 15-20 minutes.
By the time I am finished, you're going
to rise up out of that grave of
despair.
Because you're being held by a lie and
nothing else.
When that lie is exposed, you can rise
up by faith.
Now in my reading of the Psalms, I
read the Psalms every day.
And this past week I came, I want
you to go to Psalm 37.
I came across some scriptures that encouraged me
and took away all my discouragement.
Because you see, you get, just leave Psalm
37 open on your lap there a minute.
You know, when you see people falling, so
many falling.
And when you see so many Christians never
coming into victory.
This subtle lie, this subtle thought is, has
the devil got some of these people in
his hand?
Has the devil got that much power that
he's going to be able to come in
and just rob the church of Jesus Christ
at his will?
When I'm reading this, I want you to
read with me two verses in Psalm 37,
verses 32 and 33.
Verse 32, Psalm 37, The wicked watcheth the
righteous and seeketh to slay him.
The Lord will not leave him in his
hand, nor condemn him when he is judged.
Now, I look this up, now, the Hebrew,
the wicked, where it says watcheth, it means
really what he's saying.
The devil spies on the righteous.
He spies on you.
And I want you to know, every step
you take is being monitored by the principalities
and powers of darkness.
The devil can only be in one place
at one time, but he's got demon powers,
he's got principalities, he's got powers.
He has ways, the powers of hell have
ways to monitor your steps.
Now, the steps of a righteous man are
ordered by the Lord, but they're monitored by
the devil and all the powers of Satan.
Is the devil out to destroy you?
Yes, he is.
The wicked watcheth the righteous and seeketh to
slay him.
Now, I want you to follow me closely,
please.
Look this way and listen, if you will.
It's beyond question, Satan comes to spy out
the children of God.
For any little compromise, for any little turning
aside, to leap upon it, to judge you,
to condemn you before the heavenly Father, to
condemn your conscience.
He will come with condemning power.
The Lord says, the Lord will not leave
you in his hand, nor condemn you when
you are judged.
That means judged and condemned by the devil
himself.
He will not permit that.
And I want you to follow me.
Satan's determined to upset your walk with Jesus?
Yes.
Is he determined to try to get you
to fall away from God's mercy and grace?
Yes.
Is he out to ruin your life and
bring misery and pain and heartache and raise
up enemies against you, turn your friends against
you?
Yes.
That's all a part of his plan.
But why does the devil seduce the children
of God back to habits that they hate?
And why does the devil use every device
in hell to take them back into darkness,
back to cold, wicked streets?
Does he go after the children of God
that were rescued out of his kingdom?
Does he go back after them just so
he can get them to serve him again?
No.
Does he go after them so that they
can do honor to him and worship him?
No.
Because the devil knows that God has made
a covenant pledge that he will never let
them go.
He will go after them.
He will not give up on them.
And what the devil is saying, I have
a certain limited time and a certain limited
power, and I'm going to go after him
because I've been spying on him and I
see some weakness here.
He's not been reading his Bible.
He's not been praying.
He's really not seeking God.
And he's kind of flirting with those old
sins.
And there is some ground that he's given
to me.
I'm going to move in.
And the devil's not trying to get you,
sir.
He's not trying to get you, ma'am,
to come back and be a devil worshiper.
He knows you will never worship the devil.
He knows that once you worship Jesus, once
that you always have that knowledge in you
that the devil can't take away from you.
And he knows that God will not turn
you over into his hands.
So he has a limited time and what
he wants to do, one thing, he wants
to kill you.
This is the end of side one.
Destroy you.
That's why the Bible said that he's a
lion going about roaring, seeking to devour, not
to keep as his own convert, not to
get worship to himself.
He knows that cannot be.
And he knows that if God has his
way, the Holy Ghost is going to come
and convict him again.
And many are going to just go right
back to the Lord because this good shepherd
goes out to find the lost sheep, puts
him on his shoulder and brings him home.
The prodigal gets tired of his sin, gets
up and goes back to the father.
And he knows that he's out to kill
you.
He wants you to OD on drugs, you
that have been on drugs.
He wants you to get so drunk that
you get your mind satiated that you can't
think straight.
He wants you to die on the street.
He wants to kill you.
He's out to destroy your physical body so
they can say, at least there is one
who will never praise God again.
And I have buried many.
I have buried many.
I've been in the last 37 years.
I've been to one casket after another where
those who have fallen and I have had
the pain of conducting their funerals.
And you can almost hear the devil laugh.
You feel the awful darkness of the room.
And all you can do is speak to
those who remain.
And it's almost as though you hear the
devil laughing.
Well, there's another who will never praise the
Lord again.
But you see, he cannot have them.
And he knows, he knows beyond a shadow
of a doubt that God will not turn
him over in to his hands, not into
the teeth of the lion.
You see, the devil really doesn't want you,
believer, Christian.
He really doesn't want you because he knows
God not going to let you go.
He wants you dead.
Now, David took a great fall and he
sinned grossly, grievously committed adultery.
He committed murder.
He lied and he covered it up.
Now, I've named you five sins right there.
And there were many, many more.
David lied a number of times.
David faked lunacy before the king.
He was a man that failed God miserably.
Here's a man after God's own heart, the
sweet psalmist who loved God more than life
itself, he said.
And he falls into deep sin.
Now, folks, falling back into sin, when you
fall, there are consequences, awful consequences.
And David's life is an example.
In fact, Psalm 38, the next one, is
probably the most descriptive.
Agony describes the agony of a fallen child
of God more than any passage in the
Bible.
Now, if you look at the, if you
have a King James, it says the psalm
of David to bring to remembrance.
David has already been delivered from his sin.
He's been delivered from the situation that he's
describing here.
But he's going back and he's reminding of
us, reminding us of the consequences of his
sin.
And everyone who falls, I'm telling you now,
God will not give up on you.
But I'm telling you there are consequences because
otherwise you would say, well, God's not going
to give up on me.
I'll go out and have a time.
He'll come back in after I've had it.
And there are some drug addicts who go
through our program, alcoholics.
And that's the thinking.
Well, I miss the old life.
I'll go back a while and I'll come
back because I know Jesus loves me.
I know God will bring me back.
But they forget the awful consequences in the
meantime.
And listen to this man, chapter 38, starting
the first verse.
Oh, Lord, rebuke me not in thy wrath,
neither chasten me in thy hot displeasure.
Thine arrows stick fast in me, and thy
hand presseth me sore.
And he's talking about the consequences of his
sin.
There's no soundness in my flesh because of
thine anger, neither any rest in my bones
because of my sin.
My iniquities have gone over my head.
It's a heavy burden.
They're too heavy for me.
My wounds stink and are corrupt because of
my foolishness.
I'm troubled.
I'm bowed down greatly.
I go mourning all the day long.
My loins are filled with a loathsome disease.
There's no soundness in my flesh.
And, folks, I can tell you many, many
drug addicts that were saved by the hundreds
who went back for a week, too, stuck
a needle in their vein and picked up
AIDS.
In one week, came back to the Lord,
and then a year or two later discovered
that they had AIDS, and they know the
only way they could have got it was
that one week.
My loins are filled with a loathsome disease,
and there is no soundness in my flesh.
I am feeble and sore-broken.
I've roared by reason of the disquietness of
my heart.
Lord, all my desires before thee, my groaning
is not hid from thee.
My heart pandeth, my strength faileth me.
As for the light of mine eyes, it
is also gone from me.
My lovers, my friends, they stand aloof from
my sore.
My kinsmen stand afar off.
They also that seek after my life lay
snares for me.
They that seek my hurt speak mischievous things
and imagine deceits all the day long.
But I, as a deaf man, heard not.
Verse 14, thus I was as a man
that heareth not, in whose mouth are no
reproofs.
Listen, folks.
Some of you, are you looking this way?
How many of you this morning relate to
what David's talking about?
That even now, you are going through something.
I'm not talking about having fallen.
I'm talking about you still carrying the hurt
and the wound and the pain of something
happened in your childhood or in a marriage
previous.
And here you are serving the Lord now.
That he's describing those who have not come
out by faith.
He's describing what he went through when he
fell.
He's talking about restless nights he can't sleep.
He's talking about getting up all day long
with this cloud hanging over his head that
he moors.
There's a sadness that he can't shake off.
He's talking about the weakness that settled into
his body, his mind, his soul and his
spirit.
He's talking now about friends that have abandoned
him.
And you know, sin will do that.
It'll cost you your family, cost you your
children.
Ask those that go through Timothy House.
Ask those that go through Sarah House.
Ask these who have lost so much.
And there are consequences to falling.
There's consequences to not taking a step of
faith and coming out.
Otherwise, you've lived your whole life in this
condition David's describing.
A heart that has strength that fails.
The light of the eyes, no discernment.
Feeble, sore broken, roaring all day long.
Disquieted, depressed.
No soundness in my flesh.
I'm not a sound thinking person.
He's saying I'm a troubled man.
I'm bowed down greatly.
When people come to church, week after week,
bowed down.
Mourning, grieving from morning to night.
Every waking hour there's a grief that may
have been caused by a past sin.
Yes, your sins may have caused that.
But you don't have to live in it.
You don't have to continue in it.
There is victory.
There is deliverance in the name of the
Lord Jesus Christ.
But you see, this is all a remembrance.
But you see, God didn't give up on
David.
Because you see, David didn't give up on
God.
Even though he knew he was in sin.
Though he was living in misery and paying
for the consequences.
He knew he was under the discipline of
God.
He was being disciplined.
And God will discipline you because he loves
you.
And sometimes that discipline is your health.
That discipline is the loss of all things.
There is a discipline.
But the point is, he does not give
up on you.
There is still hope.
Because David in this same chapter says in
verse 15, In thee, O Lord, do I
hope thou will hear me, O Lord my
God.
For I said, hear me, lest otherwise they
rejoice over me when my foot slips.
You'll find David saying at the end, Forsake
me not, O Lord my God.
Be not far from me.
Make haste to help me, O Lord my
salvation.
Now, I've got to move on quickly here.
I want you to go with me.
You know, in the New Testament, we are
told that what happened is when the Old
Testament is for our instruction.
How many know that's true?
Everything you read about Israel is an illustrated
sermon to us upon whom the ends of
the world have come.
There are at least three scriptures that prove
that in the New Testament.
So I want you to go to one
of these Old Testament Israel examples.
Psalm 106.
Please let me hear the rustling of the
leaves.
I know you're following me.
Let's start reading at verse seven, please.
Our fathers understood not thy wonders in Egypt.
They remembered not the multitude of thy mercies,
but provoked him at the sea, even at
the Red Sea.
Folks, if you ever if you ever looked
at that verse, they provoked him at the
sea.
And then God comes on, says, even at
the Red Sea.
In other words, the greatest miracle in the
history of mankind.
He opens up the sea and they walk
over.
But even at the Red Sea, at the
very site of the greatest miracle they'd ever
seen, they provoked him even at the Red
Sea.
Amazing.
Next verse.
Nevertheless, he saved them for his name's sake,
that he might make his mighty power to
be known.
He rebuked the Red Sea also, and it
was dried up.
So he led them through the depths as
through the wilderness.
And he saved them from the hand of
them that hated them.
Because you see, Pharaoh is a type of
the devil.
The armies of Pharaoh, a type of the
prince of pieties and powers of darkness.
And he saved them from the hand of
him that hated them and redeemed them from
the hand of the enemy.
And the waters covered their enemies.
There was not one of them left.
Now, this is what God wants for his
children.
He wants you to know you are not
turned over to the hands of the devil.
I have the power to destroy every demon
entity that comes against you.
Every lie, every spirit of deception, every spirit
of depression.
I can deliver them.
I can deliver you so that there is
not one of your enemies left standing.
Not one.
He saved them from the hand of him
that hated them and redeemed them from the
hand of the enemy.
We have been redeemed.
The hand of the enemy is the power.
The hand of the enemy is power.
We've been redeemed from the power of the
enemy.
Hallelujah.
I can't tell you how good it is
to stand here and tell you no matter
how I feel, no matter how many lies
the devil would throw at me, no matter
what kind of temptation.
I am not under his power.
Nor are you.
You are not under his thumb.
I get excited.
Forgive me for screaming, but how do you
keep that quiet?
You scream back at me all you want.
Hallelujah.
Would you go to Psalm 31?
I'm going to tie this down conclusively for
our close.
I'm going to nail it.
Oh, hallelujah.
I'm going to show you now a Psalm
of David.
Don't try to race down and find out
where it's at.
Let me set it up.
Look this way for just a minute.
This is a promise being made to a
man of God who failed, who fell hard
and not listen to what.
Because you sit here and say, well, this
sounds all good.
But that's for people who have not sinned
like I have.
You don't know what I've done.
No, no.
This is for those who are on their
back.
Those who are downcast, depressed are going through
all the things you heard in Psalm 38.
Start reading with me.
Verse seven.
Psalm 31.
I will be glad to rejoice in thy
mercy for thou has considered my trouble.
Thou has known my soul in adversity.
Stop right there.
Don't read on.
I will be glad rejoicing in thy mercy
because you considered my trouble and has known
my soul in adversity.
And in the Hebrew, when it says all
through my trouble, all through my fall, all
through whatever I've gone through, you have shown
me compassion.
You've known me and you've cared about me.
You didn't give up on me.
Everything that I've gone through, even though I
even though I know I don't deserve your
love or mercy, I don't deserve anything.
Folks, I will tell you something.
I don't deserve his anointing this morning.
I don't deserve his blessing.
I didn't do anything this week to deserve
it.
I didn't pray enough this week.
I didn't believe enough this week.
I didn't read my Bible enough this week
as I usually do.
It's been a busy week.
And I said, God, when I preach, I'm
sorry, but I don't deserve your anointing this
morning because I didn't do anything for it.
God says good because it's all by grace
and mercy.
None of you have earned anything from God.
None of you could ever repay God for
what you've done.
You think, well, if God will forgive me,
if I come back to him for a
whole year, I don't do anything wrong.
No, no, no, no.
You could live a hundred years and do
anything wrong and still go to hell because
you're not taking it by mercy and grace.
But you see, he's saying, oh, God, you
were good to me, even though I was
in adversity.
You were there in my troubles.
And then listen, and you have verse eight
and has not shut me up into the
hand of the enemy.
Thou has set my feet in a large
room.
He said, you gave me some rope.
You gave me some space to be dealt
with.
You didn't try to kill me or destroy
me or hurt me or condemn me.
You gave me some space and you were
there, compassionate, love me.
And all that time, the devil's outside.
You still had the wall around me and
you didn't turn me over to the hands
of the devil.
Is that in your Bible?
Then why aren't you saying, praise God, praise
God.
Why don't you say to yourself, and you
have not turned, put your name there.
You have not shut David Wilkerson up into
the hand of the enemy.
Thou has set David Wilkerson's feet in a
large room.
You know, all that all that God is
saying.
He's asking that there be godly sorrow.
That there be godly sorrow for sin.
You go with this.
I close you.
You start from from Genesis.
You go to Revelation.
And you know what you're going to hear
the heart of God all through it is
return, return to me, return.
And I'll forgive you.
Return and be healed.
Return.
Let me read something.
If you return under the Lord house of
Israel and put away your idols and prepare
your hearts unto the Lord and serve him.
He will deliver you.
First Samuel seven, three.
Oh, Israel, thou shall not be forgotten of
me.
I have blotted out as a cloud, a
thick cloud, your sins.
So return unto me for I've redeemed thee.
Isaiah 44, 21, Isaiah 55, seven.
Let the wicked forsake his way and the
unrighteous man, his thoughts.
Let him return to the Lord and he
will have mercy upon him and to our
God, for he will abundantly pardon.
Return backsliding children and I will heal your
backsliding.
Give backslid, return to me and I'll heal
that backsliding spirit.
Return unto me, said the Lord Malachi three,
seven, and I will return unto you.
Hallelujah.
All God is asking is you quit blaming
somebody for your problem.
King David didn't blame Bathsheba for bathing nude
where he could see her.
He didn't blame Joab for being the instrument
that really killed her husband, Uriah.
He could have said, well, all I did
send him a note.
Uriah is the one that said or Joab
is the one that sent him up and
killed him.
He didn't blame battle fatigue.
He said, I will be sorry for my
sins.
David's confession all along was my sins are
continually before my face.
I will be sorry for my sin and
I will return to the Lord.
And the only thing that keeps you from
returning to the Lord, backslider or fallen person,
whoever you may be, is pride.
Pride.
If you would acknowledge your sin, quit blaming
somebody.
It's not your wife's problem.
It wasn't your husband's problem.
It's your own problem.
And when you quit blaming people, quit blaming
conditions, saying it's me, O Lord.
You put your spirit in me.
You empower me over this.
I'm going to rise up by faith.
Nobody to blame but myself.
I will be sorry for my sin.
I claim my victory because the devil has
no power in my life anymore.
We stand.
Hallelujah.
I want you to repeat after me now
loud and clear all through this church.
Are you ready?
According to the word, Satan has no power
over a child of God.
I'm a child of God and I'm in
the hands of my God and not in
the hands of Satan.
Now, raise your hands and thank him for
that.
Just thank him for that.
I thank you, Jesus.
We are not in the hands of the
devil.
We're in the hands of an almighty God.
Now, God told me in his spirit and
prayer this week that I was to call
for deliverance meeting.
And we're going to do that right now.
I want everybody in this building that's been
bound by depression, you've been bound by memories
of the past, of your hurts and wounds
and bruises and abuses, I want you to
bring them and lay them down and not
pick them up again.
I'm asking everybody that had taken a fall,
everybody on the brink of a fall, everyone
who's backslidden who wants to come back to
God, everyone with a cold heart who wants
to get on fire, I want you to
get out of your seat and come here.
And I want God to bring deliverance to
you.
This is deliverance Sunday morning.
Up on the balcony, go to either side
and come down.
Come down the stairs and down the aisles.
We're going to take authority in Jesus' name
over all the powers of hell and darkness.
We're going to ask God to set you
free today, that you will not continue another
hour under that bondage.
Jesus has come to deliver you, and this
is your day of deliverance.
If you're not right with God, if you're
backslidden, if you took a fall, come back.
He said, return to me, I'll return to
you.
Amen.
Move in close, make room for those that
are coming.
Move in close, please.
Take me not when my strength faileth.
Thou which showed me great and short troubles,
you will quicken me again, you will bring
me up again from the depths.
You will increase my greatness, you will comfort
me on every side.
He, the Lord, shall deliver the needy when
he cries, the poor also, and him that
hath no helper.
It's the crying out to God.
It's the saying, Lord, I am sorry for
my sin.
I turn to you in godly sorrow, worse
repentance, the Bible says.
Some of you have been reaping the consequences
of falling or backsliding or turning away from
the Lord.
But now the Lord wants to deliver you
completely.
He wants to restore the joy of the
Lord to your heart.
And by faith, we're going to take authority
now over every demonic lie of the devil.
All of you that came forward standing in
the aisles and here at the front, I
told you this and I want you to
hear it in your spirit now.
Please hear it.
The devil has been destroying you and holding
you by a lie.
It's a lie that he has power over
you.
It's a lie that he can control you.
So all these things that are happening to
you, you can't just say, well, the devil
is making me do it.
No, that's the flesh.
God has not turned you over to the
power of Satan.
You can have confidence right now that the
Holy Ghost is with you.
He is here to deliver you and help
you.
But you have to have that faith and
that confidence right now as I pray that
the Lord will cause these chains, these lies
to drop away from you and say from
now on, Jesus, I know that you're going
to hold me.
I am in the hand of the Lord.
And put yourself in God's hand.
He says no man then can pluck you
out of his hand.
If you stay by faith, just just rest
there by faith.
No man can pluck you out of his
hand.
Hallelujah.
I want everyone that came forward to raise
your hand.
Just lift up your hands.
And I want you to pray this prayer
with me right now.
Jesus, I am not under the power of
the devil because I renounce my sins.
I have a love for Jesus in my
heart and I confess my sins.
I return to the Lord and to his
faith with all my heart.
Oh, Jesus, I am in your hands.
I am under your control and under the
power of the Holy Ghost.
The devil is a liar.
I reject his lies.
I am not under his power.
I am not under his authority.
I resist him by faith in the name
of Jesus that he may flee from me
in Jesus name.
Now, just thank him right now.
Lord, I thank you.
Give him praise.
I thank you, Lord.
Now, let me pray.
Let me pray for you.
Father, I come with faith.
I come as your servant.
I come as a shepherd.
And I come to you, Lord, directly to
your very throne.
You've invited me to come to the throne
of mercy and receive mercy and grace to
help in the time of need.
And this is a time of need.
We have people that are standing here now
that have come for deliverance.
Lord, some have been bound by fear.
Some of them bound by depression.
Some of them bound by old memories of
terrible things that have happened in the past.
Lord, some are under the bondage and fear
of your disciplining hand.
But, oh God, let them know that that
hand is a hand of love.
And you come now, Lord, to deliver.
Oh, Holy Ghost, mighty Holy Ghost of God,
come now with delivering power and set people
free.
We speak against this depression, this bondage, this
fear.
Break the chains that bind.
Father, in the name of Jesus Christ, the
Lord of glory, to the victory of the
cross and the shed blood, we claim that
we can be free from all bondages, all
lies, in Jesus' name.
In the name of Jesus.
Now, lift your hands and say, in the
name of Jesus, I claim my victory.
I claim deliverance.
In the name of Jesus.
Now worship him now.
Worship him.
Lord, I worship you.
This is the conclusion of the tape.