Clean House - Week 2

Men, Amen and amen. I want to take just.

I'm going to take just a little bit of a

detour from our from our regularly scheduled series today, and

I just you know, this week, things trans have transpired

recently in our in I'm not even going to say

our country, have transpired in the world. And this week

I felt a shift. And that's the only way I

can I can explain it. A shift it and it

really has nothing to do with someone getting killed. I

want you to understand that God took that opportunity to

see that to bring a shift into our lives. I

have only felt a significant shift in the spirit like

this on a couple of other occasions. The most recent

one was back in twenty twenty when Covid hit. I

looked into our congregation and I said, time and time again,

this is going to change the world. Things are never

going to go back like they were. This is going

to cause a shift in culture. And it did, and

it has. The world is not the same. And I

feel a significant shift in the spirit, maybe even greater

than what I felt then. And I want to just

share my heart on where I think we are and

where I think the Kingdom of God is headed and

what God is speaking to us. And listen, I understand

that I'm going to say some things today that will

be controversial, But I'm going to say some things today

that I have thought about whether I should say them

or not.

I have.

Dug deep into the spirit level of who I am.

And I know y'all are not used to me talking

like this. You're used to me already laughing by now.

But I believe that we're standing on the precipice on

the shift of culture, and the Church will either be.

On the front of it or the back of it.

And I want you to understand that we have been

on the back of every single one of them throughout

my life. We've never been on the pioneering side of things.

But God is doing something significant and we need to

be aware of it.

If you have a Bible, go to Second Corinthians chapter ten.

Second Corinthians, chapter ten, and I'm gonna start reading in

verse three.

If you're there, say amen.

If you're not, say oh my Second Corinthians, chapter ten,

verse three. I'm gonna give you time to get there.

Second Corinthians ten, verse three. It reads like this, for

though we walk in the flesh underline that word flesh.

For though we walk in the flesh, we do not

war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our

warfare are not current, Cardinal.

But my.

I want to just stop right now, and I want

to tell you something. As a child of God, as

a kingdom citizen, you are not second class. You are

not weak, you are not beneath anything. You're not a

voice that doesn't need to be heard. You're not supposed

to sit in a corner somewhere with your hands folded,

not addressing the things that are happened. The weapons that

you have inside of you are mighty. They're the most

powerful force in the universe. It called everything that is

is into being. The same spirit that raised up Christ

Jesus from the dead dwells on the inside of you,

not to a mute and measure, but to its fullness.

You are mighty. That was free. I wasn't even planning

on doing that.

For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but

mighty in God. For pulling down strongholds, for casting down

arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the

knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the

obedience of Christ and being ready to punish all disobedience

when our obedience is fulfilled. Father, we thank you for

the word, not a word, but the word. We thank

you for the word that frames the.

Universe, for the word of life. We thank you for.

The word that is the only change agent on the

face of the planet. And we pray now that that

word sits deep at the very fabric of our being.

That the roots of your word grow and take a

stronghold in our lives.

In a harvest of life blossoms that everyone would see

and smell and want to experience. Father, help us be

more like you in Jesus's name. Amen, he said, Listen,

we don't even though we're walking in the flesh, the

things we do are not according to the flesh. And

there's always there, always has been, there always will be

a battle between flesh and spirit. There's always going to

be a tension between our flesh and our spirit. There's

always going to be an uneasiness in both directions when

we are walking into those areas that we don't quite understand.

But I want you to know that.

The world will always appeal more to your flesh than

it will to your spirit.

And the world will rationalize things.

The world will bring you to a place and it

will make things sound good. Come on, somebody, that old

devil he looked at even, he showed her. He said, listen,

that fruit looks good, it looks delicious. It's gonna make

you wise. He appealed to the things she wanted, and

he perpetrated that because he knew what would appeal to

her flesh. And for generations, especially here in America, even

those who stood outside of the faith, understood that there

was an underlying governing foundation for civility and for culture,

and everyone's actions were based on a set of beliefs.

Come on, somebody, as.

Believers, our beliefs dictate our behaviors because we love Jesus.

We don't, or we do. Come on now.

And beliefs all through history have dictated people's behaviors. What

those deep seated beliefs are have caused people to act

and to do and to be certain ways. And we

have now reached a place where it's not out of

a set of beliefs that our behaviors are dictated, but

we have reached a place where people's behaviors are now

setting their beliefs. And if you get it in the

opposite way. If your behavior is setting your beliefs, then

whatever feels good, whatever feels right, whatever is good for me,

is going to make me believe something. And because there's

no foundational truth, there's nothing concrete there. Every time I

feel change, every time I feel something, I believe something new.

And if there is nothing to hang beliefs on, it's

going to continue down a slippery slope and continue to

spiral until we no longer even look like humanity, because

our behaviors should always be dictated by the rock solid beliefs.

And now I'm timing even if those beliefs are wrong.

Come on, somebody. A lot of times beliefs are wrong.

But if somebody has a belief, beliefs can be reasoned with.

But a pursuit of pleasure can never be reasoned with

because it's always more pleasure. And the only reasoning is

if you make me feel better, not worse.

I didn't expect y'all to shout a whole lot today.

It's okay. I'd even got to the good part yet.

In Mark chapter sixteen, verse seventeen, says Jesus answered and

said to him, bless it or you Simon Barjona for

flesh and blood has not revealed this to you. There's

nothing fleshy about what you just heard. There is nothing

that there's nothing man made that brought you to the

conclusion that you've come to.

He said, blessed are you.

Barjona for flesh and blood have not revealed this to you.

But my father, who is in heaven, and I also

say to you, and I also say that you are Peter,

and on this rock I will build my church, and

the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.

He says.

Listen, before you had this revelation, you were you were simon,

which means unstable, wishy, wishy, washy, fluid like water, no stability,

no structure, no system. It just runs to the low point.

Water just runs to the low point. If you're unstable,

your life will always run to the low point, to

the lowest factor you can find, because the lowest factor

always requires the least of.

You, which will make you feel the best.

He said, But listen, you're not that anymore because you

just had a belief. You just had something born on

the inside of you that's going to cause you to

be different, and now you're not unstable anymore.

Now you're Peter, which.

Means solid like a rock, stable, strong and secure.

Now you're Pa.

And then he.

Says, and on this and on this rock, I will

build my.

Ecclasea, I will build the ecclesa. And because we understand

that word where we are right now, the context of

where we are right now, we define that as church.

But the original meaning of that word is a gathering

of men to make decisions for the governing of a city.

Let me say that again, a gathering of men who

would make decisions for the guidance and direction of a city,

a community. It was a secular word that he uses here,

and he says, hey, here's the thing. Because you have

this truth, you should be the ones that are determining

how they run. You should be the people that get

together and dictate the course of culture. But somewhere we

have lost the fact that because we stand on the truth,

and God has created us to be above and not beneath,

created us to be the head and not the tale,

that He's made us more than conquerors. We've forgotten all

those things. And somehow now we just sit back and

we say, Okay, as long as you don't take our

nonprofit status away.

We're gonna be okay.

I've had conversations in our financial office and said, boy,

if they ever took our non fact, if they ever

took our our nonprofit status away, I don't know if.

We can stay open.

I've had those conversations, and I have sat in my office.

Cod He's come to me in my office and said, listen,

we don't we We not recently, but we've had these

places where she's coming.

She said, look, we can't pay the bills. We don't

have enough money to pay the bills.

What do you want me to do? It got so

significant one time, I said, how much money do we have?

She told me how much money we had. I said, okay,

I want you to call the name of a pastor.

I said, they're in a project down there. I want

you to write a check for every penny we have

in the bank. I want you to send it to him.

She said, you're a kidding. I said, listen, if you drowning,

it don't matter if you an inch deep for a

mile deep, you still drowning. We got to have seed

in the ground, because that's kingdom we call.

Said, it's on. I let I called him and said

it's on the way because I don't want Connie back out.

Come on now. The next day.

Somebody walked in and wrote me a check for one

hundred thousand dollars. Because God is who he says he is.

But yet we think when the government is involved that

when society because of that, See, that was personally, that

was a faith thing, and it was easy for me

to have faith because that was just church thing. Come on, somebody,

this church thing. But when society is pressing in somehow,

we think that those same rules don't apply. I say, oh,

if we lose our non probably we'll probably have to close.

God has already proven time and time again that he

provides and gives us every single thing we need.

And we don't need anybody else.

You don't need anybody else besides Jesus. He is enough

for you. He is enough to get you through, He

is enough to make you prosper us. He is enough,

he said, listen on the truth that God is who

he says he is. I'm going to build a gathering

that will create an architect culture. Now, I want to

ask you a question. The culture that we live in

doesn't look like what Jesus wanted us to build. When

we look into the world, does it look like what

Jesus wanted us to build? No, it doesn't. And I

want to tell you that it's not the government's fault.

It's not the devil's fault. It's our fault, because the

devil's gonna devil. The government is supposed to protect rights

and liberties, not supposed to dictate morality, not supposed to

dictate those things.

That's the church's job.

And when those things work in equilibrium, we begin to

see what God intended to build. But because we're out

of equilibrium, because we always cower down to the powers

that be, we've lost our voice in the world. And

I want you to know that, yes, Charlie Kirk had

a loud voice in the world. He had a loud

voice in the world, and he stood for our basic

Christian beliefs and he said aloud what I have seen

so many televangelists avoid. He stood, and he set into

cameras and he stood into crowds.

What listen. And I've never done this in my entire life, but.

Given an opportunity to stand against the sanctity, to stand

for the sanctity of marriage.

He did it one hundred percent of the time.

To stand to stand and talk about marriage and sexual morality,

he did it one hundred percent of the time. To

talk about those basic Christian fundamental principles, he did it

one hundred percent of the time. And people like Joel

Ostein have given an opportunity to take stands on those

things and have.

Failed one hundred percent of the time.

When they're called on the carpet and their ass questions,

they do not stand for Jesus. They stand for a

crowd and a building. And Jesus did not call us

the pastor of crowds and buildings.

He called us to build the Kingdom of God.

One of the largest churches in America now openly embraces

the homosexual lifestyle.

One of the.

One of the greatest Pentecostal pastors has been implicated in

same sex affiliations. Whether he did it or not, he

was in places that a man of God should never be.

Because we've allowed the pressures of the world to ease

the mandate of the Gospel, not just on pastors, but

on believers. We sit back and we allow things to happen,

and we compare ourselves to other people and say, I'm

not as bad as fell in the black?

Oh isn't that a terrible thing? Oh? Is it that

a terrible thing?

Why aren't we openly creating an atmosphere where we speak

faith in life into those situations.

God has given us a.

Voice, and we must exercise that voice. In Matthew chapter seven,

verse twenty four, it says, Therefore, whoever hears these sayings

of mine and does them, I will liken him to

a wise man who.

Built his house on the rock. Where do we build

the decision making force of the church on the rock?

And the rain.

Descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew and

beat on that house, and it did not fall, for

it was founded on the rock. But everyone who hears

these things of mine and does not.

Do them will be like a foolish man.

You know, when I die, I hope, I hope on

the outside of.

My urn, on my headstone. It don't say, here lies

a fool. What does our life say?

Though, says Listen, if we hear these things and we

don't do them. If we hear these things and we

just allow things to just keep going the way they are,

and never really take a stand for anything. Says, We're

a foolish man who built his house on the sand.

And the rain descended, and the floods came, the winds

blew and beat on that house, and it fell, and

great was the fall. Society as we know it is

not built on a fundamental set of beliefs. It's built

on behaviors that appeal to the flesh.

It's built on.

Sand, because those things have no foundation. And things continue

to change. And I want you to understand that the

world that we live in, and all of the debauchery

and all of the terrible things, and all of the

sexual immorality, and all of the hate and all of

the meanness.

That will fall, it's going to fall.

Scripture tells us it's going to fall, that it will

not stand the test of those last days when Jesus returns,

it will not stand. But why don't we take a

stand and begin to make the minority feel like the minority?

Do you realize that those out as voices are a

segment of the population that are about this big. They

just have bigger cameras and bigger microphones.

But we.

Things are happening that we make excuses for.

And listen. I've had people, I've.

Had conversations with people recently, very recently, and nobody knew

what I was going to preach today, and they've said things,

and they've.

Used these very words.

But we have to stop making an excuse for evil. Listen,

listen to me, don't don't, don't get your feelings hurt.

We have to stop making an excuse for evil and

think that every time something is evil it's mental illness.

Because evil is evil, and it could be demonic, it

could be spiritually affected, it could be spiritually influenced. We

got to quit thinking that everything is about lack of

medication and realize that some things are just about a.

Lack of Jesus. It's just a lack of.

A caring church speaking the truth and reaching out and loving.

I'm not calling you to arms, I'm calling you tenie.

I'm not calling you to pick anything up top. I'm

asking you to walk to the top of the hill

and be a city set on a hill that shines.

Bright and people feel bad about what they do because

of how you live your life.

And the normality is Jesus not what we see today.

We've reached a place where the truth has to be

our dictating force that our behaviors have. Believers have to

spill out of what scripture says, and that tolerance is

not part of scripture.

Loving in spite of is.

We think that to love somebody is to just allow.

Everything to be permissible. But it's not.

As a matter of fact, when your kids come in

and lie to you, and you know they lied.

To you, you whip their tail.

Well, somebody put them in time out too, and that's okay,

but you act upon it. But when it comes to

the world, we think that love just says, do whatever

you want to. We're just gonna stand over here, and

if you need us, we'll be here. If you ever

thought the world, they don't realize they need us because

they think their behavior is normal.

And that we're abnormal.

But we have the only proven foundational truth that has

lasted through eons. We have the only foundational truth that

supports and dictates behavior because out of the abundance of

the heart, the mouth speaks and the life responds. And

we must be the trendsetters for the future. The winds

of change are blowing. The winds of change have shifted.

Culture is now aware that evil is happening in our

midst that it's not political. It's not this side versus

that side. It's the Lord Lord versus the adversary. And

I want to be very clear that he uses some

really good people. The enemy uses some really good people.

Some uses some of my very closest friends. He uses

some of the people that I love. He's probably used

me to hurt you at some point, and I'm sorry

for that, because he knows what he's doing, how to

push those buttons to.

Get what he wants.

But we have to start living boldly in our faith

and stop worrying about whether we get it all right,

and just understand that doing nothing is much worse than

doing something that.

Might just be a little off.

Action.

He's calling us to action.

Pastor Clay, you guys can come and get ready.

We need you. We need you. The Kingdom needs you.

To live a foundation of truth in your life and

to stand against the evil that's happening all around us.

It's not normal that children are convinced that they're not

boy or girl until they make a decision.

That's not normal. That's not normal. You You.

Y'all know how to tell if you've changed a diaper.

You know how to tell.

Listen.

I wasn't gonna share it. But my oldest daughter, she

had an encounter with this and she, uh, she's got

some really good friends and they went to it. She

was invited to a birthday party, but it was it's weird.

She gets invited a birthday party of people she don't

know and kid's birthday parties, and she went and she's

with this family and the little boy that she knew

asked this other little boy was the baby's birthday? Said, oh,

you got that new baby?

Is it a boy or a girl?

And this kid responds and he says, oh, well, well

we don't know yet. He's not old enough to decide. Now,

listen to this kid's response. Listen, this is an eight

year old. This is an eight year old's response to that.

The eight year old looks at his friend and says.

That don't change his diaper, and they said, yeah, yeah, yeah,

yeah yeah, mommy daddy changes.

Diver said, does he have a PIPI or no?

Because some truths are evident, and to bend those truths

because it might hurt somebody's feelings. Me, hurting your feelings

is not violence unless your belief system is based on

the way you feel, and then it feels violent. But

when you stand for Jesus and you know the rock

and the foundation of truth that you stand on, people

can say whatever they want. They can shoot at you,

they can cut you, they can cuss you, they can

persecute you. They can do whatever they want to you.

But you stand and say.

I know who I am and what I believe, and.

Nothing will change because He's who he is and I'm

everything in him. We need profits preaching powerful proclamations.

Not preachers.

Passively preaching political correctness.

It's time for the church to rise up. I believe

the shift I feel. This is not a thus saith

the Lord, but.

I believe the shift I feel is that we're getting

close to the end and we must get the bride ready.

We must leave it better than we found it. Our

generation must leave its mark right now, living in truth

and embracing holiness. Because our world is not better than

the previous generation handed it to us. It's worse, and

we must begin to live it out so that we

begin to make a culture shift. So when Jesus comes back,

he looks deeply into your eyes at the very fabric

of your soul. And you hear well done, my good

and faithful servant, Luke Chapter nine.

Verse twenty three.

Then he said to them all, every one of them,

if anyone desires to come after me, let him deny

himself and take up his cross daily.

And follow me. It's time for us to lay down

our petted hidden sin and those lusts of the flesh

and listen, not a it's not the Holy Spirit speaking

to me.

Statistics say that in this room right now, there's people

that are addicted to substances.

There are people that are.

At a minimum having emotional affairs, people that are addicted

to pornography.

There's people that you don't even really know.

If you're saved, you just come to church to make

you feel better about yourself. Those are statistics, and the

numbers are the numbers. Jipper Jones was a three to

ten lifetime hitter. If he went through a slump and

he hit two seventy, he was about to go on

a tear because the.

Numbers are the numbers. So let's have a moment of repentance.

So that we get our hearts right, so that we

can be who God is calling us to be. In

a very disturbed world, because it's about to either get

worse or better. The only way it gets better is

if we do what he's asking us to do. If

we do nothing, yet will get worse. Everybody's staying with me,

Father right now, Speak to our hearts, to the very

deep down.

Primal part of who we are, the part of.

Us that debates righteousness, our self, inddulgence. Speak to us

Lord and help us to follow you. I don't want

I don't want the Altar team to come unless you

need to when I make this alter call. But if

you're here and you'd say, Pastor, I want to be

the champion God's calling me to be. I want to

be the instrument in his hand that he's calling me

to be. But I got some junk in my life

that I gotta lay down because if I go into

that environment with this junk, I won't make it because

the enemy will exploit my junk.

If you're here today, just I have, I'm ready to

step up. I'm ready.

I'm ready to be who God has calling me to be.

I no more wish you washy. I don't want to

be Simon anymore. I'm ready to step up and be

the rock. I'm ready to step.

Up and have a name change. Today.

I want to step out of instability into stability and.

To lay down my junk.

If that's you, on the count of three, no head bow,

no hands up, nothing that's gonna ask you to step out.

I want you to come to this altar and repent

before God. We've all been there. I repent before God daily,

every single day. It's part of my spiritual journey. I say, God,

show me those places where I displease you every day,

and I can't remember a day where he said, ay

you good.

Today.

We've all missed the mark, We've all fallen short. And

now's our time to come and just say Lord, touch me. Lord,

I'm giving you my junk. On the count of three,

I want you to come one, two, three, step out

right now. Say I'm laying all my junk down so

I can be who God wants me to be. My

selfish ambition, my lust, my small mindedness, my victimhood, everything

that's contrary to the word of God. Today we're pulling

down strong. Today, we're pulling down those high places. We're

breaking those places. I missed it, Jesus, I missed it.

Wash me clean. Wash me clean when I don't have

the power to lay it down. Take it from me.

Here's my junk. That's the way you repent.

Thank you Jesus. The band's gonna sing more. People are

gonna come because this is the day.

This is that pivotal moment in some of your lives

where you said enough is enough, enough is enough.

I will not excuse evil.

I will take a stand and I will be a

difference maker. Today's that day. Astro Clay