Hello, this is Brother Denny.
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Praise the Lord.
The last session of our meditation will be
Households on Fire.
You could just get a little picture of
that in your mind.
First of all, just the analogy of it,
a house with a fire flaming up over
the top of it and out of it.
Households on fire.
I am sure that we would all agree
that the house of Stephanas was a household
that was on fire.
And as I read in the New Testament
about the household of Philip the Evangelist, the
one who had four daughters who prophesied, it
seems to me that his household was also
on fire.
This is what I want for my house.
I know no other way to finish a
series that has been filled with things to
do than to finish with a sermon on
revival.
In this last session, I would like to
make a clear connection between a godly home
and revival.
And I'm sure that I've done that a
few times through the week.
But I want to make the connection through
this sermon this evening.
I don't believe that you can have one
without the other.
I don't believe that you can have a
godly home like what we've been looking at
this week if you are not living in
a continual state of revival, or if you
are not on fire for the Lord Jesus
Christ.
You cannot have what we've been talking about.
Don't misunderstand me.
You can apply what I have shared thus
far.
You will get some good results from it.
I have preached about many things that could
bring changes in your lifestyle, home business and
homeschooling.
Those may be on God's agenda for you.
These are good things.
They bring good results.
But if you will apply all of the
many principles that I have given to you
and unite them with the power of the
Spirit of God in your life and in
your home, you will get overwhelming results and
generations of godly children.
And that's what I'm after, and I believe
that's what God is after.
Maybe you're feeling a bit overwhelmed this evening
as we come to the conclusion of this
series.
I have a word for you that gives
you a clear path to take as you
leave this place.
With men, this is impossible.
But with God, all things are possible.
Matthew 19, 26 says, If you feel utterly
helpless this evening, that can be good.
Nothing would bless your home more than if
you fell on your face every morning at
your house and wept before God for lack
of ability to go and do these things
that you've heard all week long.
Nothing will bless your home more.
Blessed are the poor in spirit.
It comes down to how we see the
Christian life.
Is it a life of things that we
do?
Or is it a life that is done
by the grace of God working in me?
There's a big difference between the two of
those.
The one view, you can take a shot
at it.
The other view requires a total surrender of
everything to God every day.
Now, that may sound radical to you, but
I'm telling you, that is New Testament.
God is calling every one of us to
that.
This is just one more means by which
God can get our attention and that we
realize, hey, I don't really have any choice.
It's all to Jesus I surrender or the
thing isn't going to come out right.
That may sound radical to you, but I'm
telling you, that's what God is after.
I'm telling you, that's what the church in
China is living like.
I'm telling you, that's what the persecuted church
in Russia lived like.
It's all to Jesus I surrender.
All to Him I freely give.
I will ever live and trust Him in
His presence daily live.
That's what God is calling every single one
of us to that.
It doesn't matter who we are in this
room.
It doesn't matter if we have eight or
nine children that we don't know how to
raise.
If we're just a single person sitting in
this room tonight, God wants you, God wants
all of you.
He will have nothing but all of you.
He will wrestle with you for the next
ten or fifteen years.
But when He gets done, He will be
the victor.
He will have all of you or He
will not be satisfied.
Sound radical?
It's biblical.
Listen to these words paraphrased for you parents
this evening from 2 Corinthians 9.8. God
is able.
That is, He is full of power.
God is full of power to make all
grace abound towards you in your home.
That you may always have all the power
you need for every situation in your home.
And that good things would burst forth everywhere
in your household.
That's a paraphrase of 2 Corinthians 9.8.
This is what God wants to do for
you as you come to Him bankrupt and
empty and needing His grace to work in
your home.
That's what He wants to do for you.
Many parents come to the end of a
series of teaching like this and they are
ready to go for it.
See, there's two responses.
Some come like this and they're just saying,
Oh man, this guy gave me more than
I can handle.
But other ones, they come and listen and
it's like, Man, let's go!
And I have a word for you too.
They have gotten lots of new ideas and
they are anxious to go home and try
them all out.
Let me encourage you zealous ones.
The answer is not the new things that
you have learned.
The answer is first and foremost Jesus Christ.
He is the reviver of every parent.
The inspirer of all the sincere ones.
Look to Him as your sufficiency and yay!
Go home and get it with everything you've
got.
If you keep Him in the right place,
you'll have all the energy and all the
inspiration to live these things out.
But if you go home without Him being
in that proper place in your heart and
leaving Him there, you can run them up
pretty fast and say, Man, this is more
than I can handle.
I've been to seminars like that.
I mean, you go to them and out
of the sincerity of your heart you say,
Man, that's good!
Let's go!
But it takes a bit more than a
bunch of new ideas to absolutely transform your
home.
It's Jesus Christ, dear brothers and sisters.
It's Him alone.
It's all in Him and He is all.
Until He takes that place in our life,
it won't come out right.
Let's look at a couple more promises in
the Word of God.
Turn with me to Isaiah again.
Reading from verse 19 of Isaiah 59.
So shall they fear the name of the
Lord from the west and His glory from
the rising of the sun.
When the enemy shall come in like a
flood, the Spirit of the Lord shall lift
up a standard against Him, the enemy.
And the Redeemer shall come to Zion and
unto them that turn from transgressions in Jacob,
saith the Lord.
As for me, this is the Lord speaking,
this is my covenant with them.
Who's the them?
Them that turn from their transgressions.
This is my covenant with them, saith the
Lord.
My Spirit that is upon thee and my
words, which I have put in thy mouth,
shall not depart out of thy mouth, nor
out of the mouth of thy seed, nor
out of the mouth of thy seed's seed,
saith the Lord from henceforth and forevermore.
Now the picture that I get when I
look at these verses and I read them,
I get the picture of somebody on their
knees repenting of their sins.
Turning from their transgressions.
God says, I will come to him who
turns from their transgressions.
That is a promise from the Word of
God.
And the beautiful picture here is that God
comes and He will put upon that one
who turns from their transgressions, His Spirit.
Now the promise is very beautiful here.
We turn from our transgressions and stay turned
from our transgressions and God's Spirit rests upon
us.
Isn't that beautiful?
Not only does God's Spirit rest upon us,
but God's Word abides in our hearts.
Like John said in 1 John, the Word
of God abides in you.
And he wasn't talking about you memorize the
Bible.
He was talking about in here.
See, when God's Spirit comes, God's Spirit takes
God's Word and reveals it to man's heart.
And He puts it in there.
He writes it there on the fleshly tables
of his heart.
And that's a promise that God gives for
those who will turn from their transgressions.
That's revival, brothers and sisters.
But God doesn't stop there.
He goes a little bit further and says,
not only am I going to do that
for you, I'm going to do that for
your children.
Now you can do what you want with
this promise, but for me, I've chosen to
believe them.
Them are mine.
God will do that for me as long
as I walk with Him.
He will put His Spirit upon me and
He will put His Spirit upon my children
and He will put His Spirit upon my
children's children.
I'm going to believe that one.
Hear these words from Proverbs chapter 1 and
verse 23.
God says, turn you at My reproof.
Behold, I will pour out My Spirit unto
you.
I will make known My words unto you.
That is exactly what Isaiah 59 is talking
about.
God says, you get down, you repent, you
turn away, you get rid of all the
sin, I will come to you, I will
pour My Spirit upon you, and I will
give you a revelation of My Word in
your heart.
And by the way, that's where we need
it.
It's not enough just to get some good
ideas up here in the head.
God wants to write them on the tables
of our heart, and that can't be done
unless the heart's clear, and that can't be
done unless the Spirit of God is on
the heart.
When the Spirit of God is upon the
heart, oh God, through the ministration of the
Spirit, writes upon the fleshly tables of our
heart the principles of the Word of God.
He puts them deep inside of our heart
so we don't have to be reminded again
to love our children.
Amen.
God's Word upon me and His words planted
in my heart by revelation of His Spirit.
And all the blessed promise that comes to
us is that He will do the same
with our children.
The God who made the children and knows
the children and knows the plans that He
has for each one will be ever present
in our homes through the Holy Ghost.
That's revival, my dear brothers and sisters.
And revival makes godly homes.
There are many enemies that fight against a
godly home.
That's no problem when you are under God's
covenant.
When the enemy comes in like a flood,
the Spirit of the Lord shall lift up
a standard against it.
We have those promises.
We can believe them.
We can trust in them.
Turn over to Isaiah 61.
Let's read verse 8 and 9.
For I, the Lord, love judgment.
I hate robbery for burnt offering.
I will direct their work in truth.
I will make an everlasting covenant with them.
Who?
Those who allow God to direct their lives
in the truth.
Look at verse 9.
And their seed shall be known among the
Gentiles and their offspring among the people.
All that see them shall acknowledge them, that
they are the seed which the Lord hath
blessed.
Now, in Isaiah chapter 61, we have one
of those beautiful prophetic chapters which prophesy the
coming of the Messiah and the day of
the anointed Messiah's ministry.
It is giving to us beautiful explanations of
the work of the Spirit upon the hearts
and lives of God's people.
Now, Jesus said, when He was here upon
the earth in His earthly ministry, the Spirit
of the Lord is upon Me.
And He has anointed Me to do all
these things that are mentioned in Isaiah chapter
61.
But, dear brothers and sisters, that wasn't just
for Him.
Now, the Spirit of the Lord is supposed
to be upon Me.
And all the beautiful things should be happening
in My life just like they happened in
His life.
And one of those beautiful promises is it
will have an effect upon My children.
God will lay His hand upon My children
because I have chosen to serve Him and
live for Him and allow Him to direct
My life in truth.
This is a promise from the Word of
God.
In My studies of home histories, I have
noticed it in every single case.
One of the fruits of the blessings that
fall on the children is that God will
use them to win the heathen.
That's what it means.
Your seed will be known among the Gentiles.
God will use them to win the heathen.
It was that way with William Booth and
William Booth's children and William Booth's children's children.
It was that way with John Patton because
of the father that he had.
It was that way with Amy Carmichael because
of the mom and dad that she had.
And Andrew Murray because of the dad that
he had.
And on and on and on the list
could go.
In fact, it was that way with Andrew
Murray's dad because of the dad that he
had back in Scotland.
Andrew Murray's dad went to the heathen.
Andrew Murray grew up in heathen land because
Andrew Murray's dad went to the heathen to
win the loss because his dad loved God
with all of his heart.
That's how the whole thing works.
I was pondering it this afternoon.
I don't know if all these things are
dawning on you like they're dawning on me.
But I see all these things just coming
together so beautifully.
I think about these three issues.
Revival, the home, and evangelism.
Those three are so closely tied together I
don't think you can pull them apart.
They are so dependent one upon the other
that you cannot pull them apart.
They are like one whole even though they
are three different subjects.
Revival, and the home, and evangelism.
And I wonder if because we have failed
to do our task that we are in
the mess that we're in today.
God sent revival to the people, to the
churches, to God's people in this land 120
and 30 and 40 years ago.
God sent revival to the people of God
in this land.
What did they do with it?
They sat on it.
That's what they did with it.
They sat on it.
What did God want them to do with
that revival?
God wanted them to raise up godly children
and send them out to a lost and
dying world.
That's what God wanted them to do with
the revival.
But instead they sat on it, and they
enjoyed it, and they kept it for themselves.
I'm telling you, these three are intricately tied
together.
You cannot have them if you do not
have them all.
There are a lot of people talking about
revival these days.
I mean, every kind of flavor of revival
that you can imagine.
But I'm here to tell you tonight, listen,
if revival does not impact a home, I
question whether it's any kind of real revival.
Oh, you say, but souls are getting saved
and people are coming and the crowds are
there.
I don't know about the crowds.
I want to know about the home.
Is it affecting the home?
Is it turning the heart of the Father
toward His children?
Is the Spirit of God brooding over that
man and turning His heart toward His children?
I question the revival.
If He can just walk away from His
children and go do something else, I question
it.
According to Isaiah 61 and verse 9, one
of the blessings that God puts upon those
who allow Him to lead them in truth
is that He will use their seed to
win the heathen.
God is always short on laborers.
Amen?
If He had 10,000 of them, He'd
use every one of them right now.
Guaranteed.
He's always short on laborers.
Remember when the Lord Jesus blessed the little
children?
How He was there healing people and doing
other things and some of the parents were
looking on and they thought, my, this man
is amazing what he does!
I want Him to bless my children!
And so, they kind of tried to get
in the line there, you know?
Jesus was ministering to people that were blind
and things like that.
They got in the line, you know.
They're going to get a blessing for their
children.
But the disciples looked at that and in
their natural mind, they thought, little children, He's
healing blind eyes.
Oh, you take your little children and get
them away from here.
The Master can't be bothered with things like
that.
Don't you realize He's opening the eyes of
the blind over here?
But Jesus, being the express image of the
Father, the stamped-out image of the Father
upon the earth, doing all things according to
His Father's heart, He looked at it and
His Father's heart welled up with a burden
within Him!
That's what happened.
And Jesus said, wait a minute, wait a
minute.
Stop with the little children to come unto
Me.
You let the little children come unto Me.
Oh, thank you for that, my Lord Jesus.
I mean, He put the little children right
in their proper place, way up there on
God's list.
Amen?
Way up on God's list.
Imagine what it must have been like.
How would you like to have been one
of those parents, huh?
I mean, the whole scene.
Everything's happening.
The disciples try to push away.
Jesus stops them.
Now it's your turn and here you come
with your little fellow.
I wonder what it was like.
How do you think the Lord Jesus blessed
those little children?
I've thought many times and imagined in my
own mind what He must have been like.
He probably looked at them with those sweet
eyes.
Just like we do, you know, when we
see a little child.
His warm, affectionate heart made them feel relaxed
instead of, I mean, sitting on the lap
of a stranger, you know.
Some children don't handle that too well.
And I can just imagine His warm eyes
looking at those children and He just invited
them to come and sit on His lap.
I imagine some of the beautiful words He
must have said.
I can just imagine His face shining when
He saw the children coming to Him as
He picked them up and put them on
His lap.
Maybe He said a few words to them
to set them at ease.
Kind words.
Loving words.
They probably felt like they were the center
of attention.
And then the Bible says that He put
His hands upon them and He blessed them.
I wonder what kind of words He said.
He grew up in a Jewish home.
His father, Joseph, blessed Him every Sabbath Eve.
I wonder what kind of words He said
as He spoke to those children, as He
spoke words over them while He laid His
hands on them.
That's beautiful to imagine that.
It's beautiful.
Well, Jesus loves the little children.
He loves all the little children of the
world.
He still loves all the little children of
the world, my poor brothers and sisters.
Even like He did there, His heart is
exactly the same as it was there.
There's only one difference between now and then.
Now, He has no hands.
He has no feet.
He has no eyes to look at them
and let them feel the smile of His
shining face.
He has no tongue and lips by which
to speak words of blessing over their life.
He has no hands that He can lay
upon them and bless them and give them
a benediction.
He has no hands, no eyes, no lips
anymore.
He has none but yours.
The only thing is, with your hands and
your eyes and your mouth, there's one requirement
that is very, very important.
And that is, He needs a yielded vessel.
If God has a yielded vessel, Jesus can
still bless the little children, all the little
children of the world.
He will bless them through you, dear Father.
He will bless them through you, dear Mother.
He, in fact, by His very presence in
your heart and your life, can reach out
with His hands and bless your children with
His very words.
He can speak words of blessing, prophetic words,
words of blessing, words of future blessings upon
your children.
He can do that through you.
But He needs a willing vessel to do
it.
And there's a big difference between going through
the motions of blessing your children when your
heart is not right with God and blessing
your children when your heart is right with
God.
Which one do you think will have a
greater effect?
When Jesus was upon the earth, He lived
out His Father's life to the full.
Do you know why?
Because He was absolutely yielded to His Father
through the Spirit in every area of His
life and in everything He did.
Now He waits to live out His life
through us to the blessing of our children.
The only way He can do it is
if we are yielded, absolutely yielded to God.
This we must come to grips with.
Brothers and sisters, it's been a beautiful week.
You have been blessed.
I can tell that you've been blessed.
I can tell it by the shine on
your face.
I can tell it by the way you
sing the songs.
I can tell it when I slip into
the prayer meeting and listen to the prayers
that are being prayed.
God has blessed you.
No doubt about it.
However, if there are issues in your life
that you're holding on to, if in fact,
you're still just going to do kind of
so half in your Christian life, all of
what God is doing in your heart, it
will have very little effect upon your home.
Did you know that?
Very little effect.
You say, brother, that's so strong.
The standard is so high.
But I'm telling you, God wants your whole
heart.
That's the bottom line.
You can be sitting here.
You can sit through all these meetings for
all this time.
You can hear all these challenges.
And you can go home with two or
three reservations in here.
Yeah, well.
Yes.
Amen, Lord.
I'm going to do better.
Yes.
I'm going to try harder.
Yes.
He's right.
I need to do a little better on
this.
Yes.
I'm not going to spank in anger anymore.
Lord, I'm not going to do that.
But all the while, there's two or three
reservations right in here of your way, of
your will, of your plans that you're going
to do.
And I'm telling you, I'm prophesying ahead of
time.
If you go out of here that way,
it will not work.
Not in the long run.
The only way it will work in the
long run is if the revival fires burn
in your heart continually.
And those revival fires will not burn unless
your heart stays on the altar.
It will not burn.
It can't.
Maybe you're sitting here again tonight and you
say, I just can't do it, Brother Denny.
It's too much for me.
Well, you're right.
You can't do it.
But I know somebody who can do it.
I know somebody.
His name is Jesus.
Praise God.
He'll do it.
I remember the young man who came to
the prayer room one evening, so frustrated, so
tired of trying to do it.
Amen.
So tired of trying to make it all
work.
He came to the prayer room at the
end of a meeting and I sat down
in a chair before him and said, how
can I help you, young man?
And he just let it all out.
He was so frustrated.
He was crying tears.
I think they were tears, some tears of
brokenness and some tears of bitterness.
He was so frustrated with trying to make
this whole thing work.
He just unloaded.
He said, I quit!
I can't do it!
I can't make it work!
It doesn't work for me!
I've tried so many times!
I'm so sick of trying!
I just quit!
And he just bawled like a baby.
He just broke and began to bawl.
Then he looked up to me, you know.
Well, what's the counselor going to tell me
now?
You know.
He looked up at me and I said,
good, God's been waiting for you to get
to that place for a long, long time,
boy.
You're right!
You can't do it!
You're right!
It doesn't work!
You're right!
You're frustrated with it!
You're right!
The whole thing's confusing!
And then I proceeded to tell him what
God was after in his heart, in his
life.
And I told him, God has brought you
to this place of frustration and undone-ness
so that you will quit trying to make
it all happen in your own strength and
just sell out to God lock, stock and
barrel!
And let Him do it!
Because He can do it!
And I'm telling you tonight, I don't know
who I'm telling, I don't know who I'm
talking to, I haven't been in the counseling
rooms all week long, I wished I could
have been, but I wasn't, so I don't
know who I'm talking to.
But I'm telling you tonight, you can't do
it!
And maybe you're at that place of nervous
frustration and you're saying, let me get out
of here, this guy has loaded me down
so many times, I don't know what to
do.
Listen, you are frustrated because you are trying
to make this whole thing work with two
or three reservations back in here that you're
going to hold on to, the things you're
going to do, the way you're going to
do it, the plans you have for your
life, and how you're going to work it
all out.
Sure, you'll play around at this Christianity thing
and you'll do some of this and some
of this and some of this, but oh,
how frustrating to try to raise these children
with those reservations settled in there.
It won't work.
The best thing you could do, dear father,
dear mother, is to fall on your face
in utter undoneness and weep and weep till
you yield everything to God and give up.
That would be the best thing you could
do.
Isaiah 57, verse 15 has these words for
us who feel undone this evening.
Thus saith the High and Lofty One that
inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy.
I dwell in the high and holy place.
But God says there's one other place where
I also dwell.
I dwell with Him also that is of
a contrite and a humble spirit.
Why do you dwell there, God?
To revive the spirit of the humble and
to revive the heart of the contrite one.
And guess what?
He'll do that every morning.
If you come to Him that way, every
morning, broken, undone, giving up, yielding everything, if
you come to Him like that every morning,
guess what He'll do every morning?
He'll revive the spirit of the humble and
revive the spirit of the contrite one and
lift up the heavy hands that hang down
and renew your vision and give you the
strength on the inside that you need to
face the day and handle the task of
raising those dear children to the glory of
God.
He'll come in and strengthen you with might
by His Spirit in the inner man.
And all of a sudden, you'll be seeing
again those things that you saw this week.
Your vision will become clear again.
You'll get up and move forward and begin
to live out the things that you learned.
And dear brothers and sisters, that's the only
way you will ever be able to live
out all the things that you've heard this
week.
One of the burdens on my heart all
this week long is that this would not
just be some seminar on all the how
-tos of raising children.
It's got to be more than that, my
dear people.
There's enough of those around and look at
the condition of this land of ours.
Obviously, it takes more than a nice how
-to program to turn out godly children.
I'll tell you what it takes.
I'll tell you how much more it takes.
It takes a father and a mother that
will fall on their face before God and
just give it all to God and yield
it all to God and turn from whatever
transgressions they need to turn from and yield
whatever they need to yield and give up
whatever they need to give up and deal
with whatever issues need to be dealt with
and deal with those things that are in
the closet that nobody knows about.
Whatever it is, get it clean.
Get it clear.
Get it all yielded.
Get it all on the altar.
And the fire will fall on the sacrifice.
According to the Word of God, it will
fall on the sacrifice.
And He will revive the spirit of the
humble.
And He will revive the spirit of the
contrite one.
And all of a sudden you'll find an
energy moving inside of you that you will
know without a doubt, this is not me.
And that's what God wants for every one
of us.
This is the counsel I gave to that
young man who came to the prayer room.
I told him, he needs to crawl up
on an imaginary altar and die there, giving
up his whole life, selling out lock, stock,
and barrel for the Lord.
Then I told him, he must be willing
to fall on that rock daily, yielding his
heart, his plans, his every choice to the
Holy Spirit's leading.
I mean, there it is in a nutshell.
Romans 12, verse 1, and Romans 8, verse
1.
They're both there in the counsel that I
gave him.
I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies
of God, that you present your bodies a
living sacrifice, holy and acceptable unto God, which
is your reasonable service.
That's 12.
Romans 8.
There is now therefore no condemnation to them
that are in Christ Jesus who walk not
after the flesh, but after the Spirit.
There it is.
There's that continual yielding of your heart and
your life to God from the day that
you got down off of that altar.
That's exactly how you can live the Christian
life.
That's the only way the Christian life works,
my friend.
I don't care.
Take the whole family thing laid out aside.
You can't do anything in the Christian life
if you don't get to that place.
That's square one, my dear friends.
That's square one.
One of my dear friends, a minister in
a growing Baptist church, came to this place
some years ago.
I will never forget what he did.
He was a successful businessman, and God was
calling him to give all his future plans
up and enter the work of the ministry
full time.
This was no easy choice.
He had a promising future.
He had a good paying job.
He had two cars in the garage.
He had the whole American dream all at
his fingertips.
And a dear wife who was enjoying the
American dream to the fullest.
And God said, give it all up for
me, my son.
I want you to get busy and do
my work.
He wrestled for days with this decision.
One day, as he was out walking in
the woods, wrestling, he came to the place
in his heart where he was ready to
sell all and follow the Lord.
Out there in the woods, he started gathering
large stones into a pile, and he built
himself an altar.
This took him a while, but that was
no problem because he was building one in
his heart while he was building one in
the woods.
And he knew what he was going to
do when he got done building the altar.
And this thing was stirring inside of him,
and he would go around through the woods
and find another stone and bring it over
here and place it in a place to
the altar.
And all the while he knew, when I
get done making this thing, I'm going to
crawl up on it.
And there he was, weeping, stumbling through the
woods, putting rocks together until he had himself
a nice little altar of stones in the
middle of the woods.
With tears running down his face, he crawled
up on that stone altar, and he wept
and he wept and he wept before God
as he gave up all of his own
plans and all of his precious dreams and
all what everybody's going to think and all
what his wife's going to think and all
what the boss is going to think and
all what the business executive's going to think
and all what the buddies at the country
club are going to think.
He gave it all up on the altar
that day as he wept his heart out
before God.
When he crawled down off of that altar,
he was a different man.
He was a different man.
Maybe some of you need to do this
for your family's sake.
I have brought you many challenges through this
week, and those challenges had real life issues
in them, for sure.
The Lord knows our hearts.
He knows what it is that is hindering
us from having a godly home.
By His Spirit in your heart, He bears
witness even while you sit here tonight if
there is a controversy between you and God
over your home, you know what it is.
God is telling you right this moment.
Maybe it's time for you to build an
altar just like that man did.
An imaginary altar somewhere and crawl up on
that altar and lay on those stones and
die.
You say, Brother Denny, those are pretty strong
words.
Don't you know I'm a lady?
Listen, this is not for preachers.
This is for Christians.
God says to every Christian, get up on
that altar and just die.
Ladies, gentlemen, young people, it doesn't matter who
you are.
This is not for preachers.
This is not for specially called prophets.
This is for Christians.
Christians are supposed to die.
Give up their life.
Give up their will.
Give up their plans.
Give up whatever sins they're holding on to.
Give them all up!
Get them all cleaned away!
Sacrifice everything!
And then God can come and light the
sacrifice on fire.
And when God lights the sacrifice on fire,
you won't have much trouble having a house
that's on fire, I guarantee you, when God
lights the sacrifice on fire.
I just plead with you to do that.
Oh, the potential of a whole family that
is sold out to God.
Dad walking under the anointing, being led by
the Word and by the Spirit.
Mom filled with wisdom and a fervent prayer
life.
Young people anointed with the Holy Ghost, living
like we described earlier.
And children being guided by their parents into
sound principles from the Word of God.
This is a godly home.
This is what God wants.
This is how you pursue a godly seed
for His glory.
This is the only way.
You know, I noticed as I was meditating
that in every situation where God gives the
promises of what He'll do with our children,
God says He will make them ministers.
Now, I don't mean ordained ministers.
I mean people in whom the grace of
God flows into and out of.
I believe we need to come to grips
with the foundation of what God is after
and realize God wants my children for His
service.
God wants my heart my whole life.
If He gets my heart my whole life,
He will sanctify my children and get them
for His service.
And my task will have been well done
while I was on this earth.
Let's bow our heads and close our eyes.
We're going to have an invitation this evening.
And I'm going to ask you to come
to the front because I think you'd all
come.
So here's the invitation this evening.
You fathers and you mothers and even you
that have some of your children gathered around
you and near you, I want you to
just turn around in your seat and get
on your knees right there and just talk
to God about all the things that you've
heard in this message this evening.
I don't know where you're at with God.
Maybe you need to do business with God.
Maybe there's some things in your life, some
issues in your life.
If there are, then deal with them.
If there are not, then just pray out
your hearts.
Pray your heart out for all these things
that God has laid before you.
I want you to do that as we
close this meeting this evening.
Any parents that are here, your heart is
bearing witness with you that you have need
in your heart and your life.
I want you just to get down on
your knees and pray.
And don't worry about the others.
Just pray out loud.
Don't worry about the others.
Once everybody starts praying, nobody will hear you.
Don't worry about what everybody else thinks.
You just lay these things before the Lord
and let God take care of the rest.
O Lord Jesus, we dedicate our lives to
Thee, dear God, tonight.
We are Thine, O Lord.
We have heard Thy voice.
O Father, we dedicate our lives to Thee
tonight.
Thank You for giving us children, Lord.
Father, we dedicate our lives to raise those
children for Thee, Father.
We trust You, Lord, that You will use
them to build Your kingdom.
We trust You, Father, for the grace to
guide them in a right way so that
You can use them someday, Father.
God, we as parents, Lord, we lay our
lives on the altar before You and pray,
take the sacrifice, Lord, and put a fire
on it, dear God.
And let that fire light a fire in
every one of our homes, Lord.
This is our prayer, O God.
Thank You for every child that You have
given to us, O God.
Please help us to raise them in such
a way that they will love You with
all of their hearts.
We pray this, Father, in Jesus Christ's name
before You.
And we thank You for hearing our prayer.
Thank You, Father, for all You have done
for us this week.
Thank You for all the light You have
shed on our hearts.
Thank You for the grace, Lord.
Thank You for holding back the enemy, O
God, in so many ways.
We praise You for that, God.
O now, Father, we trust You for grace
to get up off our knees and go
forward and do what we've learned.
God, we trust You for this.
We pray in Jesus Christ's name.
Amen.