Breakthrough Prayer - Breakthrough Start

You see, we want to put feet to our prayers.

We want to go beyond our prayer lines in breakthrough.

Mark chapter 10, verses 43 and 45.

Mark 10:43

But among you, it should be quite different.

Whoever wants to be a leader among you must be your servant.

And whoever wants to be first must be the slave of all.

Verse 45 for even I, the Son of Man, came here not to be served, but to serve others and to give my life as a ransom for many.

At The Road, our vision is to raise up wholehearted disciples of Jesus Christ.

For more information on the road, visit theroad.org.

We hope you are encouraged by today's message.

Hey, we're privileged today to have Dr.

Dick Eastman with us.

And Dr.

Eastman has been a close friend of mine for over ten years.

And uh Dick and Dee um are a very special couple to us.

He is the international president of Every Hump for Christ, which has had influence all over the world.

He has spoken at all the major conferences.

He's a part of the prayer ministries that are happening in Washington, D.C.

They just opened up a ministry right across the street from Congress.

He made me share that to pray for our country and to pray for uh revival in America.

Anybody I know, I think um Dick has not just talked about revival and talked about breakthrough, but he's lived it.

And when we when we've been at his house um and he he always talked about his prayer closet.

And I said, Dick, you gotta show us your prayer closet.

So we go downstairs, and underneath the stairwell is this little room he's got with pictures of all these people that he prays for.

And that's remember the movie War Room?

Well, that was the inspiration behind our 24-hour war room.

Well, he's been having a war room for about 50 years and uh before they ever made a movie.

And uh, and there was our picture of our family up there, and he prays for us every day, and they prays for this church every day.

And that to me, Dick, is the most powerful thing about you.

Not that you've spoken all over the world, not he's he's traveled the world a hundred times over.

That's how much he's my legacy.

He's got some really good bonus miles, I'm for sure.

But Dick, um his influence and his anointing is built in the prayer closet.

And so I wanted Dick to speak today.

I wanted him to share with us today because um I can't think of a better man to lead us into the whole year of breakthrough.

So, Dick, come on up, brother.

Do it.

That's welcome, Dick.

Well, good morning, everybody.

Are you happy?

Who's the happiest Christian here?

Can I see your hand?

I always like to check on that.

Well, hallelujah.

Are you healthy?

I know some bad stuff has been going around.

And let me give you some advice right off.

Do not Google your symptoms.

I just put in five things and apparently I'm pregnant.

I haven't told my wife.

And I have leprosy.

So don't Google your your symptoms.

But it's good to laugh.

The joy of the Lord is our strength, and we need strength in all the challenges that we face in these these days.

Well, I have a few minutes this morning to uh be a part of an introduction to not only this uh coming week, uh, but uh for this coming year.

That we are anticipating an extraordinary breakthrough year.

The Ministry of Every Home for Christ, we have a staff around the world that we support, about 8,000 now.

And uh last year we averaged over 50,000 monthly volunteers, taking the good news of Jesus to literally over.

Again, we averaged over 300,000 homes reached every single day.

And uh, you know, I know these are just numbers, but last year was our second year in a row with over 18 million people responding to the gospel by either making a decision using a decision card or indicating they wanted to know more about how to be a Christ follower.

18 million, and to put that in perspective, in the year 2000 we followed up, and our ministry was headquartered here then, we've been here in the springs for 26 years, and uh in the year 2000, we followed up five hundred and twenty-six thousand people for the entire year.

Five hundred and twenty-six thousand.

Uh last year it was three times that many every single month.

And I don't know whether that excites you, but the angels go crazy in heaven because they they rejoice when one soul repents.

That's why they have wings so they can fly all over the place celebrating.

Well, I want to begin by sharing with you on breakthrough prayer, or even you could title it breakthrough living, Kingdom Keys for Breaking Through and Kingdom Living.

I begin in 2 Samuel chapter 5, 17 through 20.

2 Samuel 5 · chapter mention

And this passage of scripture says, When the Philistines heard that David had been anointed king of Israel, they mobilized all their forces to capture him.

But David was told they were coming and went into the stronghold.

The Philistines arrived and spread out across the valley of Rephrodim.

Verse 19, next verse.

It says, uh, so David asked the Lord, that's prayer, of course, should I go out to fight the Philistines?

Will you hand them over to me?

The Lord replied, Yes, go ahead.

I will certainly give you the victory.

How many believe God can still speak to people today?

We need to be in tune to the Lord.

We can hear, just like David or Moses or anyone else, we can hear the Lord.

Verse 20, so David went to Baal Parizim and defeated the Philistines there and said, The Lord has done it, David exclaimed.

He burst through my enemies like a raging flood.

So David named that place Baal Parazim, which means the Lord who bursts through.

That's breakthrough.

How many can think of things would you like to see breakthrough in this coming year?

Real significant breakthrough.

For some maybe far more significant than others, but all of us have desires.

Next verse, 2 Corinthians 9.8.

2 Corinthians 9.8.

Paul says, and God is able to make all grace abound.

Say the word abound.

That's breakthrough.

To abound to you so that in all things, how many things?

Years ago I heard someone say all means all, and that's all all means.

In all things, at all times, having all that you need, you will be abound in every good work.

Again, that's breakthrough.

This morning, for a few minutes, I want to share seven keys for breaking through.

And these are just little seeds that I would plant in the soil of your hearts to even begin to set goals.

This is a great week, this coming week, to set goals and begin to develop disciplines that will impact our lives.

Often, certain disciplines that we develop can impact literally every day we live.

Well, the first key, this is key number one, the first key is praying your way through victory to breakthrough.

It's the asking factor, it's the asking factor of kingdom living.

You know, Charles Spurgeon was the great pastor of the Metropolitan Baptist Church in London at the turn of the 20th century or in the early 1900s, and uh one of the great statements he made on prayer, he said, whether we like it or not, asking is the rule of the kingdom.

Whether we like it or not, asking is the rule of the kingdom.

Uh James 5.16.

We know this, uh these passages.

Uh James 5.16 in the King James Version says, uh, the effectual, fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.

And I have it here in the New International Version also.

The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective.

And that's breakthrough.

Jeremiah 33, verse 3 says, Call to me, and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know.

Jeremiah 33:3

Again, that's breakthrough.

And it comes through prayer.

And it was over four decades ago when we were out in California and sitting in a warm under a warm sun in our backyard.

The power of the Holy Spirit came on me in prayer as I was reading uh Matthew chapter 26, where Jesus was in the garden and he said to his disciples, Could you not watch with me for one hour?

Matthew 26 · chapter mention

And I just began to weep, and I said, Lord, I know that I've even I teach on prayer, I do schools of prayer, uh, I've written a couple books at that time on prayer, and yet there are numbers of days where I miss praying.

I I was what you might call a crisis prayer.

And that's a person that prays when there's a crisis.

And uh the Lord kept me praying a lot because he would send along a lot of crises.

But it wasn't daily.

Until that day, I just made a commitment, Lord, if you just give me strength, I will spend at least one hour every day in your presence.

I'll make it a part of my calendar for the rest of my life, and I can stand here today and say, God has been faithful, hallelujah.

And he answers prayer.

And it is possible.

In fact, in the world prayer map that we've handed out to you, it um I don't know if you want to open it up or not, but then you'll spend the rest of the time reading.

But uh there's a 31-day prayer guide, and I give it to you so that you can begin to do something very simple in the days to come.

Incidentally, there's a segment in this map of the seven spheres of influence for uh Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday.

So you pray for different spheres of influence like the family and the government and business and education and the church.

Uh, and then inside is a map where it's a calendar where every month you can go to the nations of the world in just a few minutes a day, and I encourage people to set aside uh whether it's 15 minutes or up to a whole hour, in fact, uh the uh prayer circle that I developed many, many years ago and wrote a book titled The Hour That Changes the World, that you'll find that circle of prayer on there that if you did for each of the 12 steps, just five minutes in each of those, an hour would go by very, very quickly.

And I learned that many years ago.

And in the ministry of Every Home for Christ, we've seen remarkable, remarkable answers to prayer.

In fact, I don't know, I didn't find out whether we can show you can show the video now.

Oh, hallelujah! I want to give you a background though, first.

Before you show it, I want to give you this little background.

All over the world we do these campaigns day by day, reaching, as I said, tens of thousands of families with the good news.

Another thing we do is we go into unreached people groups where and often the gospel has never ever been.

And people have never heard the good news of Jesus.

And I remember when I was writing a book, the um titled now the uh look what God is doing.

I decided to travel around the world many times.

That in fact, uh that was the most I think I ever traveled in one year.

It was eight times around the world in that one year, just going to places to verify stories that we were hearing of what God was doing.

And I had heard this one story in the Solomon Islands where in one of the remote islands, or up in the interior of the islands, the only missionaries that had ever gone there had been martyred.

And the and the people, they were known as the Quayo people, they they were even cannibal, uh, they were cannibalistic.

And uh a team of our leaders from Fiji sailed to the Solomon Islands.

By the way, when we talk about reaching every home on earth with the good news, the islands of the world are challenging.

The Pacific Islands alone have some 24,000 islands in the Pacific Islands.

So our director there says, if you want to come and work for us, you don't join God's army, you join God's Navy.

So there.

And uh, or you better know how to swim, he says.

But anyway, they're on their way.

There are a thousand islands that our workers are on their way to in the Solomon chain alone.

And so when I heard about how this team uh from from Fiji went, and on the on the coastal area where there had been some believers, but none up in the interior, the coastal area, they prayed, uh fasted and prayed for 30 days, and God revealed to them 67 spirit forces controlling that area.

And then after that, and they prayed, and they actually fasted all 30 days, praying for breakthrough.

And when they got in the interior, it was absolutely amazing of what God did.

And uh here's a brief video that I'm just gonna kind of interrupt my teaching, and then I'll finish the rest of it, and you'll hear some of the story if it all goes well.

It was 1989 when uh everyone for Christ first arrived in the Solomon Islands, it's in the South Pacific.

It has 600,000 population, and also we have more than 1,000 islands.

There was a tribe where they still worship pagan gods.

Not long before that, they were cut cannibals, they were eating people.

My grandfather is a can he he looking for something to eat, he's looking for human beings to eat.

My father said he didn't uh kill people believing the devil also lie when they appointed us to go into the tribe.

I was afraid I would be killed for a month.

We were praying, doing fasting before we sent to those places.

The journey is only by foot, we might encounter many challenges.

There is a lot of crocodiles in the rivers.

We have to cross it because there is only one way that we can go and reach those places, we have to cross those rivers, so that's why we pray, we pray, we pray.

We finally reached that place.

The man came with a knife and bow and arrow, and I was very frightened, so I called the guide, and the guide spoke his own language, and I started to talk to him about Jesus, and then he gave his life, and then he said, Oh, I will go to lead him.

All the chiefs are sitting around the hut which uh the Paramount Chip were living.

He was very sick and about today.

They want to know why we were there, yeah.

Even though I know that my life is in danger, we share the love of God.

The next morning, the villagers told the story that the chief had died and he came back to life, and he called the whole tribe together.

And when they saw their chief, accepted the Lord Jesus Christ, it was a miracle that happened in the tribe that the villagers, the tribe, they become converted.

As a result of the work 25 years ago in this particular village, EHC now is influencing the whole country with the gospel, reaching many homes, and at the same time, we are training new generation, we are training church leaders, we are training youth workers, and also we are training ordinary Christians to reach the areas.

Christianity is growing us.

There are a lot of work to be done.

My hope and dreams that all of the soldiers to believe Jesus Christ and have a personal relationship with him.

It makes a big difference in our country.

Uh, it should be a hidden, but because of every home for Christ and our belief in Jesus.

Now I'm working for everyone for Christ.

People may think Jesus is a religious person.

People may think that Jesus is just a great teacher.

People may think that he is the Lord and the Savior.

For me, Jesus is life, real life.

The air we breathe, the road we walk, the space we can see and we live in is all Jesus.

And when I first first heard that story, all of much more detail is documented in my book, Look What God Is Doing, that when someone contacts our office, we'll send it to them.

Free of charge.

I wanted to go see that, and the only way for me to get into the interior was to go in by helicopter, and they just dropped me off.

And the last the last person you saw, that man with the tears in his eyes, was one of the two workers that first went into the village where the old chief had come back to life, and there's so much more to the story.

Where he described heaven, he met Jesus, he named Old Testament prophets, and he had never seen a Bible in his life.

Never had seen a Bible in his life.

It it convinces you there is a God, but that is the power of prayer, and that what God is doing, and I remember that trip very well.

But uh, you never know on any given day when you set aside time to pray, when you're praying over the nations, even using a map like that, when you're doing that, you never know what may be set in motion in kingdom terms.

Well, I have a few more keys.

The second key is praising, praising your way to breakthrough, the rejoicing factor of kingdom living.

Psalm 106, verse 47 says, Save us, O Lord our God, and gather us from among the heathen to give thanks unto thy holy name and to triumph in thy praise.

Psalms 106:47

In fact, I was writing down uh breakthrough words, words like victory, words like success, words like fulfillment, blessing, conquest, and triumph.

And all of us desire that.

In Acts chapter 16, verses 25 and 26 is that story of uh Paul and Silas in prison.

Acts 16:25

It says that about midnight, Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns.

That's praise, that's worship to God, and the other prisoners were listening to them.

Suddenly there was such a violent earthquake that the foundations of the prison were shaken.

At once all the prison doors flew open and everybody's chains came loose.

I made a note here, that's breakthrough on steroids.

How about that?

Everybody, you know, when we see breakthrough, it begins to ripple out.

That's why I believe so much in the local church.

Because every individual congregation has power to hold back the darkness over a city, and then it begins to ripple out, and what happens even in one congregation can happen in others, even when we don't know we've had the influence from one congregation to the other.

Well, there's a third key that God has worked in my life over the years, and that's fasting your way to breakthrough.

It's the sacrifice factor of kingdom living.

One of the great passages of scripture on fasting is Isaiah 58, uh, verses six through eight, is what I'm sharing.

And we see breakthrough throughout this passage.

Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen to loose the chains of injustice, untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free, and break every Every yoke.

Again, there you see breakthrough, the capacity that God works through his people and helps us break the chains off of others who are in bondage.

Verse 7 Is it not to share your food with the hungry, to provide the poor wanderer with shelter when you see the naked, to clothe him, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?

And then verse 8, verse 8 says, Then your light will break forth like the dawn.

All of these verses are breakthrough verses, and your healing will quickly appear.

Then your righteousness will go before you, and the glory of the Lord will be your rear guard, and that too is breakthrough.

I know in my life and ministry there were numbers of occasions God called me to fasting in prayer.

And uh I remember I remember the first 40-day fast that God called me to in 1996, that had been influenced by Bill Bright, Dr.

Bill Bright, strongly.

And I had fasted for seven days before and many, many times two or three days, but never 40 days.

And I just remember on the tenth day of that fast, I promised God from the bottom of my heart, with the greatest of measure of sincerity anybody could have, I promised him that if he would just keep me alive for the rest of the 40 days, I will never do this again as long as I live.

And that's a promise.

And then along comes the year 2000, and it's a new millennium, a new century, and a new decade, and a new everything.

And I felt again during the uh the season of Lent, 40 days to to fast and pray.

And and I remember on the very first day when I said, Lord, what what um what's the focus of my fast?

And this was funny because I was at the remember the World Prayer Center used to have Wednesday prayer times, and people would come there and worship, and so I that was Wednesday, so I went there.

And uh here it was the first day of the fast, you know, and we're worshiping, and and the reason I'm chuckling is because uh already it was just noon, and there were little men in my stomach revolting.

Not, I mean, I only missed breakfast, but they they were just calculating what it was going to be like for them down there for the rest of the 40 days, and so they were sending messages up to my brain, and so while I'm worshiping, I'm looking over at the big loaf of bread that people had for there for the for the communion, big loaf.

And any time during worship, you could go break off a piece of bread.

And uh I was worshiping the Lord and picturing how big a loaf, big a chunk I could take from the loaf without people noticing it.

And all of a sudden the Lord said, I'm not calling you to 40 days of fasting and prayer like you thought.

And I started really to praise the Lord then, and but he interrupted me and he said, No, I'm calling you to 40 days of fasting and worship.

I said, What does that mean?

And immediately you do in my mind to Acts 13 where it says, And they worshiped the Lord and fasted.

And then they commissioned Paul and Barnabas and they went out and turned whole cities upside down.

And I said, Well, Lord, what would be different in my next 40 days of fasting and prayer from fasting and worship?

And he said, All your prayer times, I want you to sing them.

All the times you read the Bible, I want you to sing them.

When you pray over the nations as you do every day, I want you to sing songs over the nations.

And that was one of the most powerful things.

That broke something in our ministry because just a year after that we broke ground for the Jericho Center, and and uh the rest is history.

The the increase of what our ministry has seen since then is is phenomenal.

But let me just say this very quickly: fasting doesn't have to be 40 days, doesn't have to be three days or 21 days.

Uh you can set aside a portion uh every like every week.

Just a if you're really accustomed to a big breakfast, set aside one and spend that time in prayer.

Or maybe even a half a day.

Multiple times in the scriptures it says that they fasted until evening.

And so develop that as a discipline.

The fourth key is believing your way through uh to breakthrough.

Believing your way to the faith factor of kingdom living.

There's something about this, and in fact, the next point I share is going to tell you how you can get more faith.

But Mark chapter 11, verses 22 through 24, says, have faith in God.

Mark 11:22–24

It's not even have faith in prayer or have faith in any other discipline, but have faith in God, Jesus answered.

And I tell you the truth: if anyone says to this mountain, go throw yourself into the sea, and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says will happen, it will be done for him.

Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for him in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.

Again, that's breakthrough.

1 John chapter 5, verses 3 and 4.

1 John 5:3

That's 1 John 5, 3 and 4.

This is the love, this is love for God, to obey his commands, and his commands are not burdensome.

For everyone born of God overcomes the world, and this is the victory that overcomes the world, even our faith.

And you know, when you think about faith, the interesting thing is you just don't need a whole great big, a whole lot of it.

Because the Jesus Himself said, if you have the the faith of a of a mustard seed, you you can move mountains, you can see things begin to happen in your life.

And so that's why I encourage you to, and it really comes into our faith, our fifth key, which is reading your way through breakthrough.

I am so glad that more than four decades ago that something else happened in my life.

I I don't really have the time to tell you the whole story, but I literally fell in love with the Word of God.

Literally.

I remember being in a small prayer room on a campus where I was getting ready to do a spiritual emphasis week and feeling I just the presence of God was just amazing.

And my Bible was open, my old King James Bible was open on a little kneeler there.

And I just knelt before the word, and I remember bending over and doing something I'd never done before.

I kissed the two pages of the scripture where it was open and was flooded.

I just, in fact, in one of the books we wrote, which has an unusual title, it's the story of my wife and I in our journey.

It's titled The Purple Pig and Other Miracles, and I don't have time to tell that story either.

I have too many stories, and my wife says they're all at a minimum 20 minutes long.

But anyway, I have a chapter in it titled Romancing the Word, and that's when I developed what became actually a seminar.

I did not know that at the time of cross-referencing and marking and color-coding your own Bible.

The teaching is called the University of the Word.

We have it online.

And I just fell in love, literally, with the Word of God.

And uh it was such a powerful thing.

And what I started to say was when I made that commitment to pray one hour a day, another thing is that I would read through the Bible in prayer, praying through the scripture from Genesis to Revelation every year.

And so that's happened year after year after year.

Joshua chapter 1.8 is a ver a breakthrough verse.

Joshua 1 · chapter mention

Study this book of the law continually, meditate on it day and night so that you may be sure to obey all that is written in it.

Only then will you succeed.

And success, of course, is breakthrough.

2 Timothy 3.16 reminds us that all scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness.

But notice the first two words there: all scripture.

And that's why we need to get in the Word of God.

You know, online there are many Bible plans.

Uh my wife and I were in uh Oklahoma City just this last week with friends uh of the ministry, and we we visited the founders of what's called U version, because every home for Christ is going to be beginning to get things, even the world prayer map on U version, so people all over the world uh can have access to a plan to pray every day.

And there's a lot of Bible plans on UVersion.

You can download the app.

We were in their big operations center where they have a gigantic screen, huge screen, and it showed on that screen how many were downloading the app, the u version app, for in different languages.

And uh as of today, it started in 2008.

It was one of the very first 100 apps that I that uh iPhones even had, one of the very first.

They were amazed that they got permission to do that.

Well, now they've had over 302 million downloads.

302 million people that have downloaded the scripture.

Uh, but it's it there's so many tools out there to help uh help you.

But let me finish this.

Number six.

Number six, and this all this is really key.

Serving your way to breakthrough, the availability factor of kingdom living.

You see, we we want we want to put feet to our prayers, we want to go beyond our prayer life in breakthrough.

Mark chapter 10, verses 43 and 45, but among you, it should be quite different.

Mark 10:43

Whoever wants to be a leader among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be the slave of all.

Verse 45, for even I, the Son of Man, came here not to be served, but to serve others and to give my life as a ransom for many.

And then Matthew chapter 23, a similar uh thought here in the Lord's sharing.

Matthew 23 · chapter mention

Matthew 23, 11 and 12, the greatest among you must be servant.

But those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.

And there's another breakthrough word being exalted, not to puff you up, but to put you in a place to be used even more of God.

And then finally, giving your way.

Number seven.

All of this is breakthrough, giving your way to breakthrough, the generosity factor of kingdom living.

Luke chapter 6, 38.

Luke 6 · chapter mention

Luke 6, 38.

If you give, you will receive.

Your gift will return to you in full measure, pressed down, shaken together to make room for more, and running over whatever measure you use in giving, large or small, it will be used to measure what is given back to you.

This is breakthrough giving.

Paul talked about this in 2 Corinthians chapter 9, verse 10 and 11.

2 Corinthians 9:10

2 Corinthians 9, 10 and 11, for God is the one who gives seed to the farmer and then bread to eat.

In the same way, he will give you many opportunities to do good, and he will produce a great.

And these next three words, harvest of generosity.

Say that.

Harvest of generosity in you.

You will be enriched so that you can give even more generously.

And when we take your gifts to those who need them, they will break out.

That's where we spread breakthrough.

They will break out in thanksgiving to God.

I need to tell you a story.

Really, it's appropriate at this point, but it has to do with so much.

You know, years ago, I I saw a book by Pastor Jack Hayford out of California.

I had no idea what the content was.

None.

But the title was the key to everything.

I thought, okay, I've known Jack Hayford.

I actually wrote a book with him.

And uh if he says it's the key to everything, I know he's he's really alert to the word of God.

I I gotta find out what that key is.

And when I opened it up and began to read the first chapter, suddenly I realized it was it was giving.

And that's interesting, the key to everything, because it's letting go in a way that we can bless others.

And early on in my ministry, actually, not in my ministry, before I went to uh uh to Bible school, but just as I was preparing to go to Bible school, uh so I was 18 years old and lived in in southern Wisconsin, and we had a pastor that he was I I don't know how else to say that he was really cool.

He played the guitar, had a beautiful voice, Pastor Doug Doug Ramsey.

And uh and there's something else.

He always uh he had new suits and and he never bought them.

People would give them to him.

Uh he'd have a new car that someone would give him.

I mean, I I never knew anybody that was given so much stuff and never made a big deal about it.

Blessed in every way, and and and and and I went to talk to him one day because I had heard that um uh just a story about him building a house along this uh uh the uh the the the river that ran through our city where the best property was in that in that area.

And uh and he and he was very gifted at building and all this stuff too.

He could do construction.

And uh and and I heard this story as I was talking to him, and I went to him, and I and I wanted to know how is it that you've been blessed so much all these years?

And let me just briefly tell you that story was that he was driving down the road and all these beautiful houses were there, and suddenly he saw this empty property where the weeds were growing up, going down to the river, and and he felt that the Holy Spirit put on his heart to stop and claim that property.

And and that he was to build himself a build he and his wife and family a house there.

Well, he walked out into the deep grass, deep weeds, to pray, and this is true.

He walks out there to pray, and as he bows his head to pray, he sees a foresale sign that had fallen down, and almost most of the words had like washed off of it, but he picked it up, and he noticed, well, this land might be for sale, and it had a phone number on it, and and and and so he called the phone number.

We were in southern Wisconsin, then the phone the the the number was from Chicago, so he calls that number in Chicago, and it's an old man, and he discovers right away that that when he said, Hey, I noticed you had some property, is that still for sale?

The old man was so excited that someone would call to buy the property because you see the sign had fallen down, no one even knew it was for sale, and no one called.

And so the uh our my pastor said, Well, how much do you want for it?

He said, What will you give me?

So he just grabbed the littlest amount that he could think of, just a few thousand dollars, and he and the guy says, Sold.

Well, that that's the way things happened with him.

I mean, it's weird.

And and uh, you know, I asked him, I said, Pastor Doug, how how how is it that you're so blessed?

He said, Well, let me just tell you one story.

He said, I can trace it to when I was uh when I was in Bible school in my last year.

He said, I I grew up in Iowa, went to Bible school in Minneapolis, and he said in the summertime I'd work in the cornfields and I'd make enough money for my tuition.

And he said, You know, Dick, I always gave my tithe, never missed giving my tithe, but I always had enough, always had enough.

He said, in the last summer before my my final year, he said, the corn crop was so amazing.

I worked 18 hours at least a day.

He said, by the end of the summer, I had all my Tish tuition, I'd given all my tithe, and he said I had enough money left over to buy the one thing I passionately wanted at that time in my life.

The one thing, and that was a Harley Davidson motorcycle.

And so he said, I bought that Harley Davidson motorcycle just the weekend before, the week before I was to go to Bible school, back for the final year.

And he said, I was so proud of that that I rode the motorcycle to our church, and it just had a gravel parking lot.

He said, I parked it right by the door where the stairs went up, and I went early.

He said, so I could stand there by my motorcycle.

And when all the people went up, they would see my motorcycle, and I could show them my motorcycle.

He said, I was so proud of that.

And he said, People would come by and say, Wow, what is that?

He said, That's my no, my new Harley.

And he said, Oh man, God's really blessing you.

And uh, and so then he went into the service, and the pastor gets up to preach his sermon.

He said, I have a surprise for you this morning.

We have a we have a special guest.

Did not know we were gonna have this.

We have a missionary from Africa who's going to be speaking to us this morning, and that missionary got up and began to describe about the dark continent of Africa and the great need to get the gospel back into the most remote places and how difficult it was, and how many had never heard the name of Jesus one time.

And when he finished speaking, the pastor got up and said, You know, I didn't plan to do this, but we're gonna take up an offering for this missionary.

I just want you to bow your heads and I want everyone here to ask the Holy Spirit, what should I give?

And Pastor Doug said to me, You know, I bowed my head, knowing I had nothing to give.

He said, Because I'd already given all my tithe.

Now what I had was for my Bible school tuition.

And so I said to the Lord, Well, Lord, please move on the hearts of people because I uh I don't have anything to give.

And the Lord said in his heart, Doug said, the Lord said to me, Yes, you do.

Yes, you do.

And he said, What, Lord?

He said, You can give your Harley.

He said, I started to cry.

He said, but it was because in that moment I knew I had to do it.

And he said, Dick, I stood up to leave.

People thought he was just leaving early.

He said, but I went out into the front, went down the steps of the church, and with all the energy I had, I carried my Harley up those steps, forced the door open.

He said, I rolled my Harley down the aisle at the end of that service and came up to the missionary and said, Here, I want you to have my Harley.

Use it to tell other people about Jesus.

He said, I went and sat down, and he said, Dick, from that moment on, I have never lacked a thing.

And there's something about that spirit of generosity right there in 2 Corinthians chapter 9, 10, and 11.

2 Corinthians 9 · chapter mention

And now here I started out talking about breakthrough prayer, but how many want to have breakthrough in every area of our walk with God?

And so I, you know, Pastor Steve, no one asked me to say this, but it begins with our tithe, it begins with our faithful generosity, because that's how we can expand in the ways that God wants us to do and what he's called us to do.

And so all of these things have to do with breakthrough.

And I just leave that world prayer map with you and mention one other thing.

Uh, every month we have a school of prayer on a Saturday morning.

Uh, and this year it's deeper deep uh deeper.

Uh I'm gonna read what it actually says here.

Deeper secrets of prayer.

And uh this 20th on Saturday morning, we talk on the secret of prayer's great mystery and the secret of intimacy with God.

And that's this uh coming, and it's Saturday morning.

Also, I know Pastor Steve and others go pray in our prayer grotto just up the hill from here, that are available and open from 6 a.m.

in the morning, Monday through Saturday, until midnight, and places to pray.

And I just say hallelujah for what God is doing in the road.

It's great, but how many know God wants to do more?

And God wants to do to each one of us.

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