Opposing Calvinism and Rising Up In Prayer | Pastor Dwain Wolfe

Hallelujah. How are we doing? How are we doing? Good?

Good, good, good, Praise the Lord. I get to bring

the sermon part of launching into the Daniel fest.

Are you ready? Yes? Are you really ready? All right?

So I'm gonna I want to talk about two things.

I want to talk about intimacy and about partnership. And

if you've been at New Horizon very long, you're already

kind of familiar with this stuff, and so we don't

have a lot of time for the sermon. So since

you are already very familiar, I'm not going to go

too deep on this stuff, right, So, but I want

to courage you that that over these twenty one days,

this is what we're trying to do, is we're trying

to deepen our intimacy.

With the Lord.

Right, So that's our friendship in prayer, that's worship, communion

time spent. You know, we're asking you in the book,

we're asking you to spend thirty minutes in each one

of your devoted times with the Lord some morning, noon evenings.

That's kind of the bar that we're setting, and a

lot of that is developing the intimate side of friendship.

So in the Lord, we are no longer called slaves.

We're called friends. So we enter in with boldness because

of the covering of the blood of Jesus. We enter

in as friends, not as slaves. When we enter in

with worship, and we enter in with thanksgiving, and we

enter in and prayer out of this friendship relationship because

we're sons dead marker, because we're sons and you know

what love underneath. Yeah, I just saw my new markers

right there, and I prefer.

The darker.

So let's grab the black as the black there. The

black's not there. The black's right there, stolen by Pastor

Dwayne earlier. Perfect beautiful. So we are sons right and

daughters right, and we are friends, yes, And so that's

that's cultivating the intimate side of our of our prayer.

And as we cultivate that, then we enter into his

presence and it's that devoted friendship and that devoted time

where we enter into his presence, then we begin to

hear from him. And when we hear from him, everybody

say here, When we hear from him, then it's inspired thoughts, right,

it's wisdom, it's insight, it's inspired thoughts, and it's the

leading of the Holy Spirit right, and that's where we're

getting the Rama of Holy Spirit. The Rama of Holy

Spirit is the living Word, and the living Word has

life giving power, and the Rama the Living Word, not

the logos, but the Holy Spirit quickening us because we're

spending time with Him results in the power to exercise faith.

So now we're hearing from Him because we're taking time

to enter in with him Romans ten seventeen. Faith cometh

by hearing, and hearing by the Word of Christ, the

Rama of Christ. And so we're hearing living words and

it's just coming as inspired thought. It's not like and

you might it might feel audible or not. It might

feel like there's goosebumps there or not. It might feel

like super powerful or not. But you'll recognize higher thoughts

and thoughts that you probably wouldn't have thought.

Right.

So sometimes that's how you know Holy Spirit speaking is

because what you're hearing is not something you would have

thought of, and so you're taking note of that, and

that's empowering your partnership in the spirit with them. That's

empowering what around here we call the prophetic right. That's

empowering a prophetic expression or decrees and declarations, and so

that's where we're entering into partnership with him. So there's

things happening in the spirit realm, and I want to

go to a couple verses on this fact is, let's

go to a couple of verses on this some that

we could just pull out of our memory, right, we

could pull a few out of our memory. For instance,

Matthew sixteen nineteen, I will give you the keys to

the Kingdom, and whatsoever you bind will be bound, and

whatsoever you lose will be loosed.

Right, So you're familiar with that one, and.

You know the context is that we're hearing from him

and we're taking steps of authority in prayer on the

basis of what we're hearing. So we're hearing what he's loosed,

and we're hearing what he's bound, and we're interacting with

the promises. We're coming up into the promises in prayer,

and then we're partnering with him. So you know, the

highest realm of Christianity, the highest realm of Christianity is

not petition. Petition is the pathway to the highest realm.

So petition is where we're going up into the atmosphere

of hearing from him. But the highest realm is where

we partner with Him through declaration and prophetic decree.

That's the highest.

Realm, because that's what and that's what the earth is

longing for. Right we read it out of Romans eight

last week. The earth is longing for the manifestation of

the sons of God, that they would deliver the earth

out of futility and to the liberty that the Sons

of God have been they themselves been delivered into. You've

been delivered into liberty when you partner with Holy Spirit

in prophetic decrees and declarations. Now you're coming up into

a realm as a manifest Sun, where of their things

begin to shift and change and come up into that

realm as well. And we're putting a lot of our focus,

a lot of our aim this particular season on restoring

the church. We want to see the church restored. We

realize that we are we're in a day and an

age where over half of the church is falling short

of the glory of God. But the promise is for

a glorious church, one that's been washed by the water

of His word, and one that is glorious in every way.

That's the promise. That's what God has in mind, that's

what he's ordained. We can partner with him and bringing

that to pass as we come into prayer and we

come in, we can come in with petition, but we're

going to come into that higher realm of hearing from

Him and then partnering with him. Is that good? Let

me read to your revelation eight to two. This is

I want you to see the picture a part of

what's happening as you pray. And I saw seven angels

who stand before the Lord, and the seven trumpets were

given to them. And another angel came and stood at

the altar holding a golden sea, sir, And much incense

was given to him, that he might add it to

the prayers of all the saints upon the golden altar

that was before the throne. This is interesting, your prayers

are coming up into the throne. This is just one picture,

one metaphor of what's happening in prayer, right, And so

what's happening in prayer as well as it is you're

coming up in prayer. Your prayers are coming up before

the throne in petition. Guess what else is coming up impetition? Impetition,

and in this intimate friendship, you're coming up, You're coming

up into the throne, and you're realizing, oh, I'm seated

in heavenly places. So part of what's happening in our

intimate friendship is leaving the world behind and coming up

into higher places. So we come up with our worship,

with our petitions, we come up as well, and so

we can see what's going on. Listen, though, let's go on,

and the smoke of the incense, with the prayers of

the saints went up before God out of the angel's hand,

and the angel took the censer and he filled it

with the fire of the altar and threw it to

the earth. And there followed peals of thunder and sounds

and flashes of lightning and an earthquake. What would happen

if the prayers, if the saints weren't praying in this picture,

in this passage of Revelation eight two through five, what

would happen if the saints weren't praying, There wouldn't be

a shift on the earth. The shift on the earth

was coming because of a partnership with heaven. So as

we well, I'm more excited than you are. I can

tell already we got to stir something up in here.

The wet blankets of darkness have been trying to visit

your heart this morning during church. But you're gonna blow

those blankets off right now. Get rid of them. Say

blankets go. We are not going to be under the

wet blankets.

Of anti prayerrism.

Hallelujah, Awaken thyself, Splash coffee in thine face. Look at this,

Look at this. The smoke of the incense with the

prayers of the saints went up before God out of

the angel's hands, and the angel took the sensor and

filled it with the fire from the altar and threw

it to the earth. And there followed peals of thunder

sounds and flashes of lightning and an earthquake. Now, don't

you know, we don't even know what was happening there

in the spirit realm, but I want you to see

something was happening.

And this is the hope that we have.

The hope that we have and the reality that we've

been walking in is the our devotion in fasting and

prayer brings us into a place of partnership in the

spirit realm, which is then being thrust into the earth

to bring a shift and a change to our generation,

to our environment. And it's going to bring a shift

in a change to the church. And as the Church goes,

so goes the world. We want more of heaven.

That's good. That's good. You're sharing yourself up.

The wet blankets are I feel the wet blankets are

being thrown off of your hands because I feel the

clapping of the church. Come on, come on, come on,

let's do it again. Let's do it again. It is

so hard to clap with those wet blankets, and so

we're casting those off right now. Fact does just stand

for a moment. Stand No, this is not the closing.

This is the first closing. Say it with me, Say

it with me. I throw off, I throw off every

wet blanket standing between me and prayer, between me and

my sonship, between me and my intimacy.

With Father and with Holy Spirit.

I say, go, get off of this twenty one days,

Get off of my heart and my mind, Get off

of my family, get off of this church, Leave us

alone in Jesus' name, Give him thanks right now, give

the Lord a thank offering. Come on, come on, come on.

He's so good. He's so good. He's so good. He's

so good. He's so good.

He's so good. Thank you Lord, Thank you Lord, Thank

you Lord. Breakthroughs, breakthroughs, breakthroughs, breakthroughs. Give us a vision

of breakthroughs. Give us a vision of a new church.

Give us a vision of a new Washington. Give us

a vision of a new nation and a new.

Globe.

We want a global change and a global shift and

a global breakthrough. Lord, we want a global breakthrough. Lord,

we want a global breakthrough. Thank you, Lord. You may

be seated. I heard the Holy Spirit say to me

this morning, it's harvest time. But then, but then we

could say, oh good, that's your sovereign will go after it, God,

go big, God, and then we could miss our partnership

with his word. His word is never a guarantee. His

word is the unfolding of the potential that we can

enter into as we partner with him.

That's what his word is.

His word is the potential of the unfolding of his

will that we can partner with if we will then

exercise our faith to be a part of it. That's

why it says faith cometh by hearing. Faith is a

potential that comes by the Spirit for us to enter

into and partner with, so that as we partner with it,

then the thing that he desires to do can come

to pass. The thing that he desires to do can

come to pass.

Amen.

I want to just I want to bug you a minute.

Are you ready to be bugged?

One of the prevalent and predominant, maybe maybe even the

most prolific doctrinal influencers in the church is John Calvin.

And John Calvin launched what is now known is the

Second Reformation, or in most circles just known as the Reformation.

But there was the Reformation before with Martin Luther, and

he was known as a Reformer, and he launched what

would be the first Reformation and began the Protestant movement

those who protest. That's where we get the word Protestant,

those who protest. He was protesting Catholicism's heresies. And not

all of Catholicism is filled with heresy, but he identified

ninety five heresies. That's early fifteen hundreds. One hundred years

later comes John Calvin. John Calvin protests another giant boatload

of Catholic heresies.

He starts a reformation.

And all who follow him would not be called Protestants.

They would be.

Called reformed reform theology, reformed churches and reform theology of

which you know the mountain. The list of that is long,

but the central one is the Presbyterian Church. And I'm

you know, in thirty three years of being your pastor,

I'm not one to talk bad about other churches. I'm

not one to talk bad about other theologians. We took

the position years ago we're going to emphasize the truth

and make our emphasis on the truth and not on

the laws.

But tomorrow.

But this morning I want to break with that a

little bit, because the emphasis of reform theology is so vast,

and the emphasis today still of reformed the churches like

Mars Hill in Seattle, which was there at one time

and ten thousand people, or like I'm trying to think

of the one I mentioned this morning. His name John Huh,

John MacArthur, No, no, no, John Piper. So anyway, the

influence is vast of reform churches, and out of Calvinism

came five Tenants of Faith, but mountains of books. He

wrote mountains of books, and much of the influence of

Calvinism is antithical to what we talk about at New Horizon.

But yet I recognize you have to fight, maybe inwardly,

that battle a little bit, because if you've been to

any other church on the planet more than three Sundays,

you've been exposed to reform theology. And reform theology is

going to rob you to a degree of your passion

to pray, because it's robbing you of your passion of

a partnership with God, and it's robbing you of the

need for you to enter into that partnership. Because the

viewpoint of sovereignty, the sovereignty of God, of Calvinism and

reform theology is so pervasive, so strong, and it's entered

into our churches so deeply that even us we can

walk around and observe evil, or observe difficulty or hardship

or pain or loss or suffering or circumstance, and we

can assume, well, that's just God's will. Well, God's in

charge of everything, that's why that's happening.

And so this.

Has snuck into the church culture deeply, and I just

want to bring it to you that it's antithical to

what I put on the board, and that it harms

our passion to pray, and even subconsciously, it can harm

your passion to get engaged in these twenty one days

because you subconsciously, not consciously subconsciously, you can be thinking

what difference will it make? How can I move God?

When he already has made up his mind about what

he's going to do? Who am I as a player

in this? Or if he wants me to do something,

he'll show it to me. I'm not listening to a

church to tell me what to do. I'm listening to God.

And no, he didn't even he didn't even convict me

about it whatsoever. He didn't empower me. I had no

grace for it whatsoever. So therefore it wasn't his will.

And so let me read. I want to read to

you out of Calvin's institute. I want to read to you.

I'm almost done second closing this. This is out of

book one, Book one, and this is chapter sixteen. I

want to drill down on how deep Calvin saw and

this is I mean literally, there's mountains of books on

this and we could be here for several like, this

is the kind of stuff you go to Oxford for

and study four years. Right on arguing Calvinism against Armenianism, right,

and so we aren't going to solve it all for you.

Maybe this morning, or maybe maybe we will. Maybe you'll

just be quickened by Holy Spirit, and maybe you'll just

realize that there's something subconscious that is affecting you and

it's harming you from really diving deep into a prayer

partnership with Holy Spirit. I'm praying that's what happens. I'm

praying that even though you might be on board for

the most part with New Horizon style Armenian theology, you

might you might just realize that there's some of this

still kind of bugging me at my gut level that

I need to dismiss. I need to confront it, I

need to over over overtake it, I need to demolish

every argument. So here's out of book one, and this

is out of chapter sixteen. If one falls among robbers

or ravenous beast, if a sudden gust of wind at

sea causes shipwreck, if one falls among robbers, or if

one is struck down by the fall of a house

or a tree, or if another, when wondering through a

desert path, meets with deliverance or after being tossed by waves,

arrives in port and makes some wondrous hair breadth escape

from death. All these occurrences prosperous as well as adverse.

Carnal sense would attribute to fortune. But those who have

learned from the mouth of Christ that the very head,

hairs of your head are numbered, will look further for

cause and hold that all the events, whatsoever, are governed

by the secret count soul of God. Now he drills

deep on this for volume after volume, that you'll never

know the will of God, you'll never know the counsel

of God. You can't explain the will and the counsel

of God, and that these things just take place. And

this is all the will of God. It's all the

sovereign will of God. And part of the mindset of Augustine,

which he was much earlier. But Calvin reaches into his

theology and draws much from Augustine. Part of this is

the belief system that Satan has been demolished or darkness

has been demolished, and that being so, then the only

reasoning is that God is in the midst of everything.

Even what appears to be evil is not evil at all.

It's God's hand for a greater cause or a purpose

in your life. It's a misunderstanding of scripture. It truly is. Listen,

he goes on. He says, with regard to inadamate objects,

we must hold that though each is possessed of its

particular properties, yet all of them exert their force only

in so far as directed by the immediate hand of God.

Hence they are merely instruments into which God constantly infuses

what energy he sees appropriate, and turns and converts to

any purpose at his pleasure. We had a friend lose

his life, and about how old was Peter. He was

scrambling up a mountain up near Smokwalmie Pass, and scrambling

up a mountain, you know, didn't have a helmet on.

Scrambling means running up the rocks as fast as cannibun.

So the guys were doing it. And toward the top

those particular big rocks, you know, they're like chrys falls,

only they're bigger. Right, those particular rocks kind of gave

out and he lost his way, and he tumbled down

the hill and died at the bottom of the hill. Well,

this theology would say that those rocks gave way for

him and not for the others. There were about ten

guys with him that morning, because it wasn't time for

the utters to die.

But those other but the.

Rocks that gave way for him. They were moved upon

though inanimate, though inanimate objects, they were moved upon by

divine purpose to give way for him, because it was

his day. So this, this intricate control of Calvinism, has

been woven in to all of our theology since sixteen

hundred and to a degree it affects all of you.

And even for you to say, like, well, God's in

charge now you might polish it off with therefore our

trust him. Well that's good, and go ahead and trust God.

But the enemy is still at work, and so are

a bunch of humans with free will. God has sovereign

desires and he's leading us in a sovereign plan. And

Armenianism would say that God is in charge, but he's

not in control. There's a lot we can know about

what God desires to do. But the way this whole

thing works is this divine partnership. It works where we

are reaching up with desire to know his will. We're

reaching up into the heavens in prayer in petition, we're

coming up into our sonship where we can see what

he desires.

Then we partner with him with prophetic decree.

And declaration, and Heaven responds and react acts by sending

crazy powerful movement into the spirit realm wherein we dwell

and in our generation, and then things shift, and this

is what he desires. It's enough that he doesn't know

what he wants to do, that he doesn't know what

he desires to accomplish. It's just that he has limited

himself to partner with us. And the partnership doesn't have

to be like a super limited partnership because he's shown

his full hand of sovereign desire to the Son. And

then the son has made us one with the Father.

So we enter into the Father through the Son, who's

become the victorious man, the supreme overcoming one. So we

don't have to have a limited knowledge. We can actually

know his will because the Sun knows his will and

to the Son he's given everything, including the earth, and

so we can enter into the Sun. We can hear

from the Sun, and then we can have the words

of the Sun to declare in our generation as send.

Now this is what we want to do in our

twenty one days. This is this is our this is

our prayer and our desire, and I'm just I'm praying over.

You that if any disablement.

Is bothering your soul, like if you're you know, out

of this reform theology, if any disablement is bothering you

like you're feeling like, well, God's gonna do what he's

gonna do anyway.

No, he's not.

Not without a generation of believing ones, the not into

the lives of unbelieving ones. He's not going to do that.

He respects your sovereignty so much. He will not superimpose

his sovereignty over years. He will wait until he has

a partner to bring what he wants to do in

the earth. Because he respects your sovereignty. He's put a

boundary around your sovereignty. But when you desire him, then

he comes near. So that's why James Ford says, draw

near to me. This is father talking through James. Draw

near to me, and I'll draw near to you. Draw

near to me and I'll draw near to you. This

is what we're doing for twenty one days, and it's

kind of a first fruit. It's really a first fruit.

We're setting this whole year apart, and we're saying, Father,

we want you to mark the whole year. We want

this whole year set apart for you. We want you,

Holy Spirit, to mark this whole entire year. Let it

be a year of transformation and change. Let it be

a year of the outpouring of the spirit. Let it

be that year of harvest. Holy Spirit. I'm asking you

deliver us right now. Deliver us from every lie, every excuse,

every heresy, every wrong thinking, every wrong thought, every doctor

and of demons.

Holy Spirit.

I'm asking that you'll deliver us of disempowering words. Deliver

us of disempowering words, so that your enablement would come

upon us. We welcome your grace right now. We welcome

your grace to pursue you, to run after you, to

hear you, and to express you.

Come on.

Yeah, I just said this morning, I've prayed something over

Christian and I felt like it was a It was

a word over the church that there's a clarity of

mind coming, like the fogginess from the Bride of Christ

is just coming off. I don't know how many of

us wake up in the mornings or just throughout the day,

there's a fogginess and lack of clarity until you hit

that caffeine. I don't know, but I feel like it's

too It's God wants to eliminate that. And if that

means getting off caffeine, get off caffeine. You know what

I'm saying. So I'm going to pray and declare that

over us and that the demon of fogginess would come off.

Is that okay? Yeah?

And and it comes to me, Satan knows how powerful

you are. John Calvin. Maybe didn't know how powerful you are.

Come on, but Satan knows how powerful you are in

your generation and for the generations to come, because the

Kingdom has built generation on generation, so our ceiling becomes

floor to the next generation. Come on, and Satan knows that.

That's why he's trying to suppress and quench and quiet

and disqualify every one of us.

Come on, Come on, Father, I just thank you for

the glory of heaven right now, just raise up your

hands as we close, Father, I thank you that the

clarity of heaven, the ideas of heaven, the peace of

heaven that surpasses everything God is resting on your people

right now. Every demon of distraction, every demon of fogginess.

Just put your hand on your head real quick, every

demonic influence lived off right now in Jesus name, come on,

just begin to declare the clarity of Heaven over your mind,

over your heart, over your life. Father. I thank you

God that as we leave, as we leave this place, God,

I thank you that every individual is going to begin

to have God encounters in the realm of our thinking.

In the name of Jesus God, I thank you for

an increase of the influence of Heaven.

God.

I thank you that the spirit of Heaven is in

this place and it's going with us as we leave.

God.

And I thank you that as we enter into this

fast God, that you're equipping your body to be victorious,

that you're equipping us to think Heaven's thoughts. God, that

the realities of heaven are are gonna get very clear

in our minds and in our hearts. In the name

of Jesus God, we thank you that today, even today,

I feel like there's thoughts that are gonna come. They're

gonna be up to you to use your armenia armeniastic

heart to realize that it's God's calling you to partner

with heaven in Jesus' name. So I bless you and

thank God and Jesus' mighty name.

Come on,