8th May 2022 All Age Service - Gordon Hickson - Nests for Eagles

You just pray Heavenly Father for your blessing on Gordon. We thank you for

him. We thank you that he is here to bring us your word,

to be your mouthpiece. Lord, Father, we pray your protection over him.

You pray that you guard him and guide him and maybe be your mouthpiece

so that he would speak what you would have him speak. Lord, we

pray that you open our spiritual eyes, ears and hearts to receive all that

he has from us. Thank you, Lord, and Jesus name is pray

Amen. Amen. Well, it's so good to be with you. And

when Dave rang rang me a few weeks ago, I was just so thrilled

to be able to connect with you. We've known each other for donkeys years

before my hair went gray, and we had great times in those early days.

But my background, I come from Oxford and I'm married to Rachel.

Actual humanises all over the world, and we've had a very sort of checkered

career. I was ten years in the army and then Rach and I joined

a man called Ride out of Bunkie. I was riding at Bunkie's campaign director

for a number of years, then came back to this country. Then I

passed it in the Watford area, passed a group of four churches for quite

a few years, and then I got hijacked by the Anglican Church and became

the vicar or parish vicar of Snordate's Church in Oxford, which was a fabulous

student church. And I was there for probably about six seven years and developed

in a ministry called Mauhamma. Mohamma means arab Love in Arabic, and so

I began to start reaching out to a lot of Arabic people just with the

love of God and just seeing the spirit of God touching many many Muslim people.

And then I just handed it over Covid Hit and I've been working since

then with drugs, alcoholics and a movement called Betel, and also working on

some of my wife. So if anyone is interested in my historian or our

story, the books in the room just over there called Harnessed for Adventure by

Gordon Hixon, so feel free to go and have a look at that.

I want to before before we dive into the scriptures. I want to read

something that you know, just like God gives you prophetic words, God gives

me poetry. He literally woke me up with this poetic flow. But it

was such a clear clarion call for this time. I'm going to read that

before we step into the Bible. And basically it was called the heavenly Virus,

God's response to the coronavirus. In twenty twenty, COVID virus hit the

nations of the world. But strangely, this was also when God's global plan

unfilled, leading raising leaders in the church who saw with perfect vision to impart

faith and hope and reconciled the vision. Those were the days of lockdown,

which stopped us in our tracks, when our old wine skins failed, revealing

all the cracks. And we saw so clearly then that it's not by might

or power, but it's by God's Holy Spirit who is needed in this hour,

as in those days of old. They're in Jerusalem with those disciples locked

down in that upper room. It seemed to all the world that day that

Rome had clearly won. But little did they know right then that God had

just begun. As those nails pierced his hands and that spear pierced aside,

the world grew dark and gray. Every hope and dream just died there on

that cross at Calvary. The devil's fury was out poured. But God reached

down and see that cross, and it became his sword. There it was

that God himself made a spectacle and stripped the devil of his power and saw

all his demons whipped. That moment could have easily brought a global wide disaster.

But here is where our Lord became our king and sovereign master. And

so today, when it just seems this virus might have won, we all

now need to come to faith that our God has just begun. Old ways,

traditions, wine skins, all of these have stopped, and God has

pruned his church, and all religion has been cropped. And now it is

our God's turn to send his heavenly virus, a global wide awakening, a

revival flower amongst us. Gone are all the man made hierarchies and things that

made us sterile with fear, control and ruptures. This is the day we

need to seize. God's Church. Must be a movement. Every believer,

now empowered to know where Heaven is sent disciple by servant leaders who know how

to equip an army of believers, each one held in his grip like those

lepers in lockdown back in Elisha's day. We all will soon discover that the

enemy must pay every crippling constriction, every limit now has gone. Our enemies

have fled away in terror and abandoned, and now we're walking out to a

totally new landscape. Millions, once captive, are seeking all ways to escape.

These months of this cruel virus showed the people they can't cope and now

they're yearning deep inside for our messages of hope. God has shaken and he's

shall just his realm now remains. Gone are the excuses, the deceptions and

the games. People are just crying for relationship and touch. God's signal to

us, all who've been given so so much. So come on, all

you leaders, let's a rise, let us shine, Let's make God's love

go viral. Come on, now, it's our time. Let's rise up

with his weapons of unity and prayer. Let's demonstrate with grace to all that

we care and yes we dare. So that's what God just literally just downloaded

me. It was burning in me, but I felt such an excitement when

I had that. What I've been wrestling with ever since is this just wrestling

with the fact of our have we been paralyzed almost with a lockdown mentality,

with fear political correctness. Have we been herded back in politically correct churches,

in what I call chicken farms, rather than being gathered in eagles nests to

be able to be trained, equipped and then released to all around the world.

And I think we've got to wake up to the fact that so much

of the body of Christ through lockdown, have been herded into chicken farms,

just in a lockdown mentality. We're born to the eagles. We're born to

be those who spread our wings and go for God, and we cannot be

constricted. This is our time. And so let's read that scripture in Two

Kings, chapter seven, ventures in the poem about the lepers. But we're

going to read that particular passage, and I'm going to just refer or use

that as the springboard really Two King seven, verse three to nine. Two

King seven, three to nine. Now, there were four men with leprosy

at the entrance to the city gate, and they said to each other,

why stay here until we die? If we say we'll go into the city,

the family is there and we will die. If we stay here,

we will die. So let's go over to the camp of the Aramians and

surrender. If the spare us, we live. If they kill us,

then we die. So at dusk they got up and they went to the

camp of the Aramaians. And when they reached the edge of the camp,

no one was there. For the Lord had caused the Aramaans to hear the

sound of the chariots and horses and a great army, so that they said

to one another, look, the King of Israel has hired the Hittite and

the Egyptian kings to attackers. So they got up and fled in the dusk

and abandoned their tents and their horses and donkeys, and they left the camp

as it was, and ran for their lives. The men who had leprosy

reached the edge of the camp, and then they entered one of the tents

and ate and drank. Then they took the silver, the gold, the

clothes, and they went off and they hid them. They returned and entered

another tent and took some other things from it, and then hid them also.

Then they said to each other, what we are doing. Now,

listen to this. What we are doing is not right. This is a

day of good news. And we are keeping it to ourselves. If we

wait until daylight, punishment will overtake us. Let us go at once and

report this to the Royal Palace. So, Father, I've just prayed that

you would just burned something into our spirits today. Let the revelation of Heaven

come into our spirits. Lord, we do not want to be in that

lockdown mentality of chicken farmers. Father, we want to spread those wings of

faith again and begin to start soaring on the thermals of the spirit. So

come, Holy Spirit and ministered to us today in Jesus' name. Amen.

So I really do believe in my spirit, I hear the sound of the

abundance of rain. I feel this is our time, our moment in the

UK, but also globally, and as the poem says, come on,

let's arise and let's shine. And loads of Christians, I believe, are

feeling a bit confused. They don't know what to do. Things have been

shaken, wine, skins, denominations, everything has cracked been shaken during this

time of COVID. But we need to get excited that there's a massive harvest

out there, that the landscape has changed. When we get out again,

we're realized that a lot of shifted, a lot of things have happened which

we hadn't understood. The whole spiritual landscape is different. And you know,

people I believe, and I saw this for myself. The people have been

tenderized by the virus. They've got a lot more sensitive that a lot of

their facades, the defense machistms have gone, There's been a lot of mental

ill health. Everything that can be shaken has been shaken. Now, the

Bible says that when that happens, it's the kingdom that remains. So what's

remaining in many different places is a resilient, courageous kingdom. But if it

stays locked down in these chicken farms rather than releasing people as egles, we're

not going to succeed during this day. We've got to somehow get into this

now. I know the world's been shaken. You know, we've had that

COVID virus globally, but also we've had the Ukrainian War in Russian and Ukrainian

War. So many different things have just been on the front pages, the

climate change, the conflicts all over the place, and then we've had lots

of issues of terrorism nation after nation, We've had a water and food shortage

in many places. We've then had the food crisis, the energy crisis.

We've had the plunging birth rates in the EU. Then we've had twelve million

people shifted out as migrants out of their homes in Ukraine. You know,

two hundred and fifty million people have been shifted out of their place of birth

in this era. I mean, there has been a massive shaking, but

the Christian Faith during this time is blossom. I talked to Nicky before about

how with all the troubles going on in Zimbabwe. I mean I lived in

Zimbabwe for a while. What it's done is it's just made the Christian faith

explode in growth because people need Christ, they need God. In times are

shaking, but we need to recognize that times like this have happened before.

And if you track the times of pandemic, you look look right back to

the second century, third century, fourth century, right after those pandemics that

even just during them, the Christian faith exploded in growth. In fact,

if you look back in Luther's day, Luther was there alive during the Bubonic

played. It was during that time in Bubonic play that the revival happened.

The revival happened, So we need to wake up and realize that God's doing

something. And during these extraordinary times, which many people haven't lived through before,

we've got to walk by faith and not by sight. It's too easy

to get intimidated with fear. And we've got to start believing in the supernatural

because if we look in the natural, or does it do it leads us

to political correctness, fear and a lockdown mentality. So we just keep quiet.

This passage says we're not doing this right. We need to get out

there and tell people, Hey, something shifting. There is good news out

there, and we've got God's spirit within us, which always leads us should

always lead us to faith. You know, during lockdown I read about several

people, but one of them was a guy called John G. Lake.

He was from the States. John JE Lake went to South Africa and he

took that move of the spirit, the Azuza Street Revival. He took it

to South Africa, started the Apostolic faith move. As he arrived, the

bubonic plague was sweeping through South Africa, and God gave him a gift of

faith and said it's not going to touch you. So he and a young

Dutchman began to start going into the villages, picking up dead bodies and burying

them and doing funerals. Nobody could understand the faith level that he walked in.

And he just said, well, he said, he said, what

do you mean? He said, the spirit of God is living within me.

No demonic virus can touch me. He said, if it does,

I'll die. And so they said, well, let's see. So he

said, I'll prove it to you. So he got some bubonic plague and

he said, I want you to put a microscope over my hand. Place

bubonic plague on my hand and see what happens. They put it on his

hand. It began to just shrivel and completely die. That is the power

of the spurit of God within you and I we've got to realize Christ within

is the hope of glory. There's something that we've forgotten. We've been and

we've had our wings clipped, our wings of faith clipped, and we've been

herded into these chicken farms, pecking each other and pecking at the dusk,

rather than flying in the wings on the wings of eagles, on the thermals

of the spirit. We've got to get up again and begin to allow that

faith dimension to start moving. The spurt of life can flow into me,

and it can flow out of my being, and it can move out of

every part of my you know whenever. I mean, that's why we lay

our hands on people. We believe we're releasing the power of God from within

us to touch people's bodies. And when I worked with Rhinout Bonkie, we

saw so many people literally instantly being touched by the spirit of God, blind

eyes being opened, deaf people hearing, deaf and down spirits fleeing. We

saw so many demoniacs healed, people jumping out of a wheelchairs. I mean,

it was just extraordinary miracles, happy even people raised from the dead.

You know, when I was out in Spokana just before COVID, my wife

and I went to the grave of John G. Lake was there just outside

of spoacun We just knelt on that grave and said, God, we do

not want to get frozen with this unbelief. We want to start growing our

wings of faith again. I begin to start moving with signs and wonders.

It's burning within me. And I remember when I worked with Rhinot Bonki.

He often one of his his things. He often used to say to us

as a team, he said, he said, flies only settle on a

cold stove. Flies only settle on a cold stove. In other words,

when you've got a fire of God in you, the devil won't even think

of putting his sticky fingers on you. So we've got to get something on

the inside. We've got to realize that if we if we have fears now,

if we get marinated in fear and political correctness, then it makes us

lose our peace, and it attracts diseases illnesses. But if we get filled

with the spirit, things shift, things change. You know, I've had

the most extraordinary three years. God warned me that I was going to have

to walk through major valley of death, and I've walked through it for three

years. Three years ago, I was told I've definitely had cancer, and

because I'd been worn, I just knew I didn't have it. I had

to walk through five months of testing the doctor, right, my wife said,

you've got to convince him he's definitely got cancer. After five months,

he called me and he said, look, I'm totally stumped. I cannot

find any cancer in your body. And then I had a complete meltdown in

my body after a small operation and my damaged my vegal, vegan nerve or

whatever it is. My whole body went into spasms and I was in twenty

four to seven pain, couldn't walk, couldn't raise my arms. I was

in absolute agony. I literally got to a place of complete hopelessness. I

couldn't move at all, and praise God, I'm married to a pre warrior.

She mobilized twenty one days of prayer, and on the twenty first afternoon

it broke and I began to lift my hands. From then on I got

better and can now run up hills. But you know, then the devil

wasn't finished trying to slap labels on me. And that's what he does.

He tries to slap labels on you to make you accept it. I was

then told you definitely have Parkinson's top consultant in the Jay Oarsford, Loxford.

He said, he said, I'll resign if you haven't got this. And

after five months of not showing me that I had any symptoms of it,

he said, look, I'll prove it to you. He said, I've

got two and a half thousand pounds budget on that the top brain scan you

can do. He said, you want to go through that? So I

went through the brain scan. A week later I got a letter saying,

look, I'm absolutely flabb against it and totally in shock. There is not

the slightest trace of any damage to your brain. You don't have the trace

of Parkinson's in your body. Now, come on, Church, we've got

to wake up. The devil is trying to label us and label us and

label us. We cannot let fear make us accept these things. We gotta

let the spirit of God repel disease and walk in it and shoulder be healed

in Jesus' name. That was my ice skating with my grandkids last week.

But come on, we've gotta let the spirit of life in Christ lift us

up. It says very powerfully in Romans eight verse two that when you live

in Jesus, then a new law takes effect within you. The law of

the spirit of life sets you free from the law of spirit of life,

and it lifts you up out of that law of spirit of sin and death.

It's just a simple law. You don't have to know how it works.

I step on again and again on the planes. I'm got a clue

how the law of aerodynamics work, but it lifts me up. And if

we step by faith into Christ, he lifts you up. I mean,

I don't know how it works, but it does. He lifts you up

from sin, from sickness, from so much. But we've just got to

get into Christ. We've got to trust him, believe in him, rest

in him. And you know, it's so different. It's a difference in

your Christian life between paddling hard with all your might, trying to struggle through

your Christian life and just sitting back on a jet plane. Ah, it's

so different. We've got to let the Spirit of God take control again and

move in us and be eagles with those wings of faith. Now, Jesus

breaks the power of the law of sin and death over our soul, but

the Holy Spirit gives us a higher law. It's the spurt of life in

Christ, and it can destroy all of Satan's work. That is why he

came, It said, Jesus came to destroy all the work to the devil.

That's our remit that's the mandate we've been given. We are little Christ.

We're called to destroy the works of the devil. We've not just been

forgiven cleansed from sin. You know, we're called to go and be supercharged

daily, to speak the word of God, to declare the word of God,

to lay hands on the sick, to release that good news. What

we are doing, as that pass said, is not good. We can't

stay there just enjoying it. We've got to hear that song of oceans.

Come on, Spirit, let us lead me out beyond the borders. You

know, when we were singing that song again and again and again, that

hit me so deeply in my spirit, that song of Oceans. I felt

so challenged by that song. Come on, Spirit, lead me out beyond

those borders. Let me get out into those waters deeper with the spurit of

God. You know, in my family, one of my distant relatives,

a guy called John James Moore Hixon. During lockdown, I sat down and

I read his book called Heal the Sick. Now. He was Healing the

Sick twenty years before the Pentecostal revival of a Zuzu Street, exactly one hundred

years ago this year. He got to the age of fifty two and he

thought, what I'm doing is not good. So he jumped on a boat

and he started taking this healing misity all around the world. For five years,

he just traveled and traveled, just laying hands on the seat. Unbelievable

miracles. I thought, if he can do it, I can do it.

I got, I said, I felt so charged, super charged.

Come on, God, I want to see something shifting. And I just

want to regrow those wings of faith, because faith is the currency of the

kingdom. But you know, and I know that faith gets tested. God

puts you, Peter said it, he puts you through tests of faith to

see if it's genuine. Now you've got to really understand what faith is.

You know, faith is not hyping it. It's not presumption. Faith is

simply the germination of the seed or the Bible says, the sperma seed of

the of the Word of God in the womb of my spirit. He injects

the seed or sperma of his word into my spirit. It germinates, and

I have faith. I'm pregnant. I'm impregnated with the Word of God.

It begins to grow and as you know, I mean, I've never been

pregnant, but it takes time. And we don't like that we think we

get it, we hear a prophetic word, we want it now tomorrow.

We've got to realize it grows in you, but it can be aborted.

And so many in this politically correct, fearful atmosphere hear things, but they

let it go because of fear. We don't have the courage to push it

through. We've got to have the courage to push through and see things shifting,

see things happening. So faith again, I'll say, it is the

germination of the seed of the Word of God in the womb of your spirit,

Sony just and then it begins to grow, and it grows and grows,

and eventually we give birth to that. And we've got to check our

heart because if we're not buzzing with faith, it means that as the parable

the soa says, something might be wrong in here. I need to regularly

say, God, is my heart too heart? Is it like that solid

ground? Is my heart too full of fear? Is it too busy?

Too cluttered? God? What is stopping me having thirty sixty one hundredfold fruit?

God? What is going on in here? And I have kept on

over lockdown, saying God, deal with this. I do not want to

have a heart that is so hard that it cannot bear fruit and be a

womb for the spirit of God. And I'm really feeling that I'm just coming

out of kindergarten and ready for ready for ministry. I've just last year,

I had my seventieth birthday and God very kindly woke me up and said,

welcome to your next fifty years of ministry. So I kind of I just

laughed, and I felt God say, if you don't have that attitude,

you're thinking you're slowing down. He said, you've got to believe you're just

starting off, Otherwise you're just going to fade out. So come on,

you people in your eightiesy and ities, let's get going now. We need

to recognize the sciens that are out there. Over my life, I've watched

signs of the spirit of God beginning to move again in Europe has been spiritually

dead for many, many years. But then I began to see that the

Jesus Revolution happening and growing within Norway and then sending people all over Europe to

touch different cities. And then saw soul survivor burst out of Watford where we

used to live, and extraordinary things happening. I mean thousands and thousands of

good Anglicans got born again and filled with the spirit, and many other different

people. Whole youth movements there used to have thirty thousand in the summer.

Comes something was happening amongst the youth. Then in Switzerland ICF started. That's

spread through Switzerland and then into Germany. And then you may not like the

Catholic Church, but God likes it, and the the Catholic Charismatic Movement has

seen thousands of young people coming to Christ being baptized in the Holy Spirit.

It's extraordinary what God's doing amongst the youth in the Catholic Church in different places.

I mean, there's as much demonic in the Anglican Church as there is

in the Catholic Church and in any denomination. But God loves it, and

he says, I can work with these, and He's actually beginning to revive

denominations and draw people into a place where they can find a living faith and

begin to spread their wings. And it's fantastic. Now if we look across

the world, we've got to look and begin to believe, because rapid multiplication

has happened since nineteen hundred when the spread of God began to really speed up.

It took seventy years for the Body of Christ to double. Then it

only took twenty two years for the Body of Christ to double, and then

only ten years for the Body of Christ of double. There is something shifting

globally in terms of the exponential growth within the Body of Christ. And we've

got to recognize that. Yes, we'd have been portress Europe where we can't

see it, but it's happening. It's the beginning of those signs within Europe.

Almost ten percent of the world, almost ten percent of the world are

now evangelical Christians. There were probably over thirty percent that are Christians, but

over ten percent, that's over seven hundred million people. I mean, there's

a lot of people with the good news, but as I said, many

are trapped in chicken bombs, not in eagles less. And if we could

get this message and realize that eighty five to one hundred thousand people are being

born again every day, we need to realize God is speeding up. You

know, look with the eye of faith at what's going on in the Russia

and Ukraine. I mean Ukraine was packed with really spirit filled Christians, and

you know they've been scattered all over Europe. Now they are taking the Gospel

everywhere, and it's something is going to happen because of this. God's not

mocked, God is not marked, the devil is not one. He's just

begun. Something powerful is going to happen because of this war. Don't start

getting worried. I believe it's Jericho hour. And for me, Jerichoh hour

is that you look back at the verse of as Isaiah forty five, where

Jesus says, I'm gonna well. God said, I'm going to go before

you. I'm going to level the mountains or the opposition, and I'm going

to break through the gates of bronze, the bars of iron, and I'm

going to give you the treasures in darkness to me. God spoke to me,

and he said, those are the people in systems of darkness in Hinduism

and Buddhism and Islam, it's secularism, all those different isms. God says,

I'm going to break down these Jericho walls around these things and I'm going

to begin to start. Lets you change the landscape, just begin to realize

its harvest time. It's an awakening time and I believe fortress Europe will be

saved. But I think we've got to wake up and be humble and like

Abraham. Abraham in hope against all hope, he believed God. You know,

he felt he was barren, and I think in Europe, in England,

we feel we're barren. We've got to believe God will fulfill his promise.

There are so many prophetic words about revivals flowing from England right through Europe.

I mean extraordinary revived prophetic words that are talking about global revival. Even

Zimbabwe. I should say extraordinary prophetic words about what would happen when the demonic

powers stopped messing with Zimbabwe, that it would become a lighthouse for the whole

of Africa and many other nations. So I think we need to wake up

and realize God's still on his throat too, still says the devil might be

screaming and shouting and shaking everything, but God's seated on his throat, and

he said, come on, you ask of me, Come on to Christians,

asking me the name. I want to give you the nations, the

nations as your inheritance. It takes a different type of spiritual sight and you

and I where we get faith, our eyes open. That's what it says

in Ephesians. The eyes of your heart are enlightened so that you can see.

And when you begin to see the invisible realm, then you begin to

start attempting things which are impossible. Because we don't serve the God of the

possible, We serve the God of the impossible. We should be looking for

impossible situations where God just says this is going to change, and we just

go for it and the doors open. But it's only love that keeps you

going. Faith will compel you, but love will keep you going. And

I've watched missiaries century after century going out and laying their lives down, saying

that we're laying our lives down, and we're compelled to sow our lives in

this generation in order to read the multitudes in the next generation. It costs,

and I think we've got to pay that cost at this time. What

I want you to understand about the times of shaking is that God sometimes,

and listen carefully to this, God sometimes takes us to a place where it

looks as if he's unfaithful. God sometimes takes us to a place where it

looks as if he's unfaithful, just to see whether our faith is real.

And you and I, I'm sure we've all been at that. There are

times where you just look at the situation, you just think, no way,

God's totally failed me. But if you would just praise God in that

time, no matter what's going on, look by faith, not that sides

see God. I know that, I know that, I know that you've

spoken, You're going to do this. God says, you're my man,

You're my woman, And suddenly the gates open. Talks about this in Jsea

chapter two, verse fourteen, how God leads us out into a wilderness so

that he can catch his eye to eye and begin to speak tenderly to us.

And then he said, during that time, suddenly the valley of trouble,

value of acre, value of trouble suddenly opens up an unbelievable door of

hope, and we step out into the future. So we need to hold

that thought. I don't know what's going on in your life, whether you

feel God's fail me here, but look, he has never ever failed one

of his promises. He's not going to do it for you. Now,

what is so hard for us about the word go? I don't know what

it is. We don't have to cross the sea. We just have to

We just have to see the cross and then cross the street. And it's

just a matter of just being willing to talk. It's being willing to share

but the full hope that we've got and just give those messages of help to

people. I believe this is a time when every believer can be equipped to

just share what we've got. And I think that's what people are looking for

the reality. They're not looking for religious people religious churches. They're looking for

people who've got something and they walk up to you and they just say,

whatever you've got, I want that, I want it. And I've had

people walking I've had I had two Muslims walking up to me after church.

I go a Hillstong in Oxford. They just walked up to me and said,

whatever's in there, we want it. They could just feel the presence

of God. And so we've got to carry that, not just have it

in church, but carry it on ourselves, carry that annointing and be able

to just have people saying to us, Hey, whatever you've got, I

want it, I want some of that. No, we've got to know

who we are we've got to know who's inside us. As I said before,

it's not by my it's by the spirit. And Jesus said, we've

got to wait until we know that, we know that we're filled with the

spirit, and you and I have got to know that. And once we

know we're filled with the spirit, our eagles in wings begin to start spreading

out again, and they begin to start flowing and spreading, and then we

begin to start finding ourselves, catching those thermals of the spirit, and we

go higher and higher. Now, the only thing, the only thing that's

going to bring us to being filled, is that question, are you hungry?

Are you thirst? I mean, Jesus screamed it out. He said,

if anybody out there's Thursday, come to me and drink. It's just

that simple. We've just got to come to him, drink, and then

out of our enormous being, rivers of living water will flow. You know.

I got saved, as I said, I was an ex army officer.

But I got saved when I was an army officer. But at Cambridge

University. I won't tell you why, but I mean I asked my commanding

officer to go to Cambridge University for three years while I was an officer,

and I wanted to completely disprove the Christian religion. I hated it. I

just despised it. So I did social at apology, social psychology. I

looked at all the different religions, and you can very easily prove that every

religion, including Christianity, is just a mirror image of society that frames it

and it just develops a control system, a moral system that can actually help

that society live and thrive. But then I began to meet these born again

Christians that said, wow, great, you've got rid of religion. Now

you can concentrate on Jesus the person. Because Christianity has got nothing to do

with with religion. It's all about that living relationship with Jesus. So I

started my second dissertation to try and prove that Jesus was a complete hoax and

complete fraud. And I got kicked out of residence because I was always drunk

every night, and I was living on a houseboat on the river camp,

still doing my dissertation, still a student, but not allowed back in college.

And I was sitting there one Sunday. This is back in nineteen seventy

four. I was writing all my reasons why Jesus was a complete fraud,

and suddenly my boat filled with the glory of God. I was flooded with

the glory of God. I can't describe it. I think Nicky would probably

understand it. It's like an African storm about to break. The presence just

is so heavy, and then you know suddenly it's going to come. I

just went to my knees and I sobbed and sobbed and sobbed, and iro

brot the bottom of the paper. I can never turn back. I know

you're there, I know you're alive. I know Jesus is the son of

God. I ran across to a church and I joined my Christian Union,

and they couldn't believe that this drunken had become a Christian. I joined the

Christian Union, and I started doing what I thought all Christians did. I

started doing good stuff. It was out every day after lectures, helping the

alcoholics and drug addicts. I was just doing, doing, doing, doing.

I was, but I was intellectually convinced and converted. Not much.

I was in here, though, and one day God spoke to me through

an Irish alcoholic, and he looked at me, and he said it with

his Irish accent. He said, I to be sure, he said,

you, you're a totally hypocrite. You you're a totally hypocrit. At least

I have a little bit of spirit in me, but you, you have

absolutely nothing in you. And I knew it was true. I knew that

I had absolutely nothing of the spirit of God within me. That made me

desperate, absolutely desperate. And it was because of that desperation I didn't go

to lectures for three months, and I just read and read and read and

read and read and read and read and read the Bible until I had an

encounter with God and I got baptized in the spirit. My life changed forever.

But come on, we've got to realize, it's not my mind.

It's not my power, it's not my theology, it's not my intellectual thing.

It's by the power. It's by the power of the Spirit of God.

And you and I have got to reconnect in every way. And I

know, and I've been as guilty as as many of just allowing it to

simmer down. And but during lockdown, I've just felt, come on,

God, come on, God, I've been reading and reading a thing.

Come on. I wasn't born for this. I'm not born for religion.

I'm born for signs and one is I'm born for salvations. I'm born for

more than this. Something is burning in me. And yes, I have

just come out of kindergarten. Yes I am ready for fifty years in ministry,

but I just feel this is our day. We've got to show the

world we care, we dare, We've got that courage. But it's by

the spirit of God. Come on, it's just stand wherever you are,

Just say, stand in the press of God. Let's just close our eyes.

I don't know what's going on in your life. I don't know whether

God's been speaking to you over this time of lockdown. But let God search

your heart. Even David shouted, Oh God, search my heart, show

me what's going on inside me. And you might need to just say to

God, God, I don't know what's going on. Search my heart.

Whatever is in there that really offends you, show me God, because I

really want to be a carrier of the presence of God. And if you

are desperate to reconnect with the spirit of God and to let that fire come

on you, if you're desperate for that, then I just want you to

lift your head to heaven and lift your eagles wings, even if there may

be limb lift your eagles wings up to heaven, lift your hands up to

heaven, and let's just let the Spirit of God come on us. So,

Father, we're here like Abraham. Father, we realize how powerless we

are. But in faith against all, in hope, against all hope.

Lord, we believe in the power of your spirit. We're asking you to

baptize us with not just the spirit, but the fire of God. But

in these coming days and years we can carry that disease, repelling sin,

repelling fire of God that just moves in us and through us. So,

Holy Spirit, will you come and fill us again? Pour through us that

living water. We drink deep. No, I don't know how you drink,

but why didn't you just take a deep breath, drink in that deep

bring, breathe deeply, and then as you breathe out, breathe out all

that negativity, that pain, that hurt, and then breathe in again,

drink in the hope and the presence of God, that love, that faith.

Then breathe out all that pain and the past, the shame, just

repel it expect it and be filled with that power of the Living God.

Be filled, Be filled, Be filled. And those of you who are

sick out there, I just want you to put a hand on that place

that's sick, and we're going to speak a word of deliverance right now to

you wherever you're you're sick, and so Father, we just take authority to

declare the good news is that Jesus has died, that Jesus has written that

by his stripes we are healed. We declare in Jesus' name that his blood

cleanses us from all sin. But Lord, we declare also his healing power,

and we break every witchcraft spirit, every spirit of infirmity. We declare,

they are broken, every demonic hold of sickness over us. And we

release the healing presence of God into every person. Right now, be healed

in Jesus, Nay, be free, right now, whatever hold in your

mind or your emotions, be free. Those chains are broken. Right now,

be free, be free, Be free. Take a deep breath,

Take a deep breath in, drink it in, feel free to just breathe

out, and speaking to jibrosh oh bag, What a gracious God, what

a great God. What a compassionate God, What a most of God.

God, Will you take hold of us? Lord, will you change us

from being chicken farms to nests of eagles? Father, will you grow our

eagles wings again? And let us go on those thermos of the spirit,

touching different places, moving in the spirit. So Holy Spirit, we are

yours, Caven phillis possess us. Take control of our lives, our minds,

our futures, our marriages, our bodies. Oh, be free,

be free, be free, be filled. I just let the spirit of

God rest on you and fill you. It's so good. He is so

good. He is so good. Let him harness you for adventure, just

as he harnessed me for great adventures. Be honest by the spirit of God

for his faith adventures. What a wonderful God. Oh you're so good,

Haneijah, Amen. Why didn't you get somebody a hug? God is so

good. Just get somebody a hugging to say, hey, God is there

for you? Oh, thank you. Wow. Stop feeling the presence of

God. Just it's amazing power in the room right now, the peace,

the power of God, the strength. Let's go out and be bold.

Let's go out and be brave m Let's go out and rise up on wings

like eagles. We will run and not run, and we will be weary.

We will walk and not faint. We will let the power of God

rise us up. We will not strive in our own strengths, but let

power and the spirit of God's strength in us and guide us and lead us

to walk upon the waters. There's that song again, that ocean song.

Can we put that up again? That we will walk upon the waters,

that we will keep our eyes