Sermon

True or False Refuges

Omega Church NZ

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  1. You've tuned in to a mega church.

  2. We are people hungry to encounter God through worship

  3. and His Word being witnesses to the world around us.

  4. We pray this teaching blesses you and trust God will reveal

  5. Himself to you in a new way today.

  6. And if you need prayer for healing or breakthrough what to

  7. find out more about Omega, get to our website or Facebook page

  8. through the links below. And so we are living in a time

  9. where we need to dig in a little deeper to raise our vision the

  10. the Scripture finished then on the sentence with you, Lord is

  11. unfailing Love and power belongs to God.

  12. And so we need an increase in power and we need with it an

  13. increase in love because you have the power.

  14. With no love, it's harsh or dominating.

  15. We need to see the vision of how we can have the power and the

  16. love combined. I want to look at that scripture

  17. we've just read a little bit, and I think it's an actual 5

  18. sections. It's written by King David, and

  19. it's probably not that. He's told me, written at a time

  20. when he was in hiding, his son Epsilon was looking for him to

  21. kill him, the son to kill the father.

  22. The son had stolen the King's, if you like, power to reign the

  23. Kingdom of David. And so David was a refugee

  24. looking for somewhere to have refuge.

  25. And so David's crying out. But before he does that, he

  26. makes a declaration. I believe that this is a, a

  27. weapon that we need to understand.

  28. We need to declare everyday who is our source and where is our

  29. refuge? And so he makes a declaration.

  30. Truly, my soul finds rest in God.

  31. My salvation comes from him. Here's my rock and my salvation,

  32. my fortress. I will never be shaken.

  33. But look at the circumstances. He's hiding in rocks and in the

  34. desert. People are after him to kill

  35. him. How can he say that?

  36. In the natural his world has never been worse, but in the

  37. supernatural he's declaring what's going to happen.

  38. And it did happen because he was restored to his Kingdom.

  39. But in the moment it seemed hopeless.

  40. But that's no problem for God, eh?

  41. Our God is a miracle working God.

  42. And then he speaks a little bit about how threatened he feels

  43. and unsafe his situation is. So he owns his feelings.

  44. He, if you like, unloads on to God what's going on.

  45. Then he goes on to say, yes, my soul will find rest in God.

  46. My hope comes from him. Here's my rock and my salvation,

  47. my fortress. He amplifies that.

  48. That is where his identity is on his own.

  49. It's too hard with God and the word is fortress that comes

  50. through. He is protected and he talks

  51. about other people who who are getting ahead or making progress

  52. or those people who who are nice to your face and stab you in the

  53. back when they're away. Those situations.

  54. He acknowledges that life sometimes is really harsh and it

  55. may seem other people are getting an advantage, but not to

  56. focus on it. It's temporary.

  57. They will not last. They will not stand.

  58. I do remember hearing something about a man who's a multi

  59. millionaire who's just died recently, I won't name him.

  60. And a reporter went to his house and he had a mansion and one of

  61. his comments was what a beautiful house and garden you

  62. have here. And he said his name.

  63. And the man says, really? I just look around and see

  64. weeds. He had wealth, he had status, he

  65. had success, but he wasn't happy.

  66. He had no peace. It's interesting that my son's

  67. actually met him and talked to him and he was a pretty angry

  68. man. His money did not bring him

  69. peace. It did not bring him, if you

  70. like, success in his heart. But then David goes on to say

  71. one thing. I've spoken so one thing God has

  72. spoken and power and love comes through.

  73. So the power of God will overcome evil, and the love of

  74. God will overcome all hate and rejection.

  75. And so he's again declaring at the end of his Psalm, like it

  76. was at the start, that his trust is in the Lord, and his success

  77. or his peace comes from God only, not from his own strength.

  78. I want to share something briefly because you can read it

  79. the other way. You reward everyone according to

  80. what they have done. And you can look at that and

  81. think, well, you know, we've done some bad things, so we're

  82. going to get our due reward. No, for the good you have done,

  83. you will have an eternal reward in heaven.

  84. Don't look at the negative for the things that you've done to

  85. help other people. You will be rewarded.

  86. You may not be rewarded in this life, but you may.

  87. But you certainly will have the warm embrace from your Heavenly

  88. Father when you get there, eh? There is something waiting.

  89. The reward is being stacked up, a credit to your account.

  90. Do not discount it. Is that exciting?

  91. I thought it might be great. I want us to share this verse

  92. together. And again, as David did, we are

  93. making a declaration. We are speaking out loud into

  94. the spiritual realm where our help comes from together.

  95. It's from Psalm 9, verses 9 and 10.

    Psalms 9:9

  96. We'll say it together. The Lord is a shelter for the

  97. oppressed, a refuge in times of trouble.

  98. Those who know your name trust in you for you.

  99. O Lord, do not abandon those who search for you.

  100. Are you people who are searching for God?

  101. Am I talking to the right people?

  102. Yes, you are the people who are searching for God.

  103. In the reading that Owen read, what is the theme or the

  104. buzzwords that kept coming up? People, what did you hear

  105. repeated in that Psalm? I know we haven't got it on the

  106. screen, so you can't read it. What?

  107. Do you remember, Owen? What was for you?

  108. Trust in God. Yep.

  109. Keep going. Refuge.

  110. Give that man a chocolate. What else?

  111. Hope. Yes.

  112. Waiting. Waiting.

  113. Yes. Expectation.

  114. There's expectation there, yeah. So there's a lot of imagery in

  115. Scripture, like a fortress. And so we have this defensive

  116. thing that cannot be penetrated, but we sometimes feel under

  117. threat from the world. But actually we have a fortress.

  118. In the first song, it's said about our Lord being a high

  119. tower. Do you remember that?

  120. That line? And it was a place of security

  121. where we cannot be, if you like, attacked or brought down.

  122. So the next slide. But every time I nod, it's to

  123. turn the slide over. Yeah.

  124. So where do we go? And trouble looms.

  125. What is our default position? What do we instantly go to, to,

  126. if you like, comfort ourselves or to sort it out?

  127. Do we go to the word of God and act on what it says, even though

  128. it may not make sense to our natural minds?

  129. Or do we sort it out ourselves, use our intellect, and make

  130. something happen? There's a reminder in Amos 37.

  131. The Lord will give us prophetic leading.

  132. And so there will be answers in multiple ways for every problem

  133. that we will have. Now I ask someone if they heard

  134. of Pella and Masara, and the person who I won't name, said it

  135. sounded like a menu for a Mexican restaurant.

  136. Pella Masara. But there is a person in the

  137. room who has been to Masada, so you can talk to David afterwards

  138. about that because I have not been there.

  139. And so it's a very good comparison because they're both

  140. ruins now. There was a city called Pella

  141. which is on the left, and that's the temple that's left.

  142. You can go and see the temple in Pella or you can go to this very

  143. tall fortress called Masada. And so, yeah, that is the

  144. options we have. And so Pella is interesting was

  145. actually over the Jordan River, what we call Jordan today.

  146. And it was a it became a city of refuge for the new Christian

  147. Church that that followed Jesus. And so I won't read it, but we

  148. have this information from Jesus, from Jewish historical

  149. books and Diaries. So these are the events not in

  150. Scripture specifically, but are recorded.

  151. And so when these people who were in Pella came back to

  152. Jerusalem, they were on fire for God and they could do miraculous

  153. signs. And God had taken them out of a

  154. situation that they could have been in, protected them in a

  155. refuge, and had equipped them to come back and minister to the

  156. people. And So what had happened was it

  157. was foretold by Jesus that the city of Jerusalem would be

  158. destroyed. And so in 66AD an Angel spoke to

  159. the people, the believing church in Jerusalem.

  160. Get out now before the Roman army comes and sacks the city.

  161. And so they left their homes and everything about their life to

  162. go to this place called Pella, because it was for them a city

  163. of refuge. And so when the people were

  164. murdered by the Romans and taken captive and slave, the city was

  165. destroyed. They, the remnant was protected.

  166. That's what God does. He protects the remnant.

  167. Are we the remnant? Yes, we are.

  168. That's the pattern that God does.

  169. He takes us out of danger. And so they were told to flee,

  170. and they did. And they then came back to

  171. safety once the danger was over. And you compare that to Masada.

  172. And Masada was built by King Herod a few years before Jesus

  173. was born. And he had it as a fortress, a

  174. place you could retreat to because it was impregnable, if

  175. that's the word. In other words, you can't

  176. capture it. It's on a hill, like a very big

  177. hill. And so they had all the food and

  178. water fortifications. You could not get there.

  179. It was a safe place. It was the, if you like, the

  180. king of the times idea that he could protect himself without

  181. God. And so he built this fortress on

  182. top of this hill, which was actually in Israel.

  183. There's lots of pictures of it, probably better than that

  184. picture that you see now. But there was lots of buildings

  185. and fortifications ready to be used.

  186. And it was a safe place in the natural wells.

  187. See that They dug into the ground, Yep.

  188. They had their own wells, own water, Yep.

  189. So they were able to live there for a long time and be

  190. self-contained. And so 960, I would call them

  191. Zealots. I'm not sure what they were, but

  192. these were the people who went to Masada in 74AD and they went

  193. there to protect themselves from the Romans.

  194. And so the Romans laid siege to it, which lasted maybe up to

  195. seven months, I'm not sure. And so the Romans built a ramp

  196. which cost them a lot of men probably to climb and to invade

  197. the fortress, which they eventually did.

  198. So on the picture you can see a a structure that's been built

  199. that the Roman Jews. But this is the sad part.

  200. There were 960 people who were in the natural fighting the

  201. Romans and who were resistant to the Roman rule.

  202. When the Romans entered the fortress of Masala, they'd all

  203. committed suicide. They'd killed themselves because

  204. they were not going to be captured by the Romans.

  205. They were not going to be tortured, treated as slaves.

  206. And to defeat the Romans, they, they killed themselves and the

  207. Romans walked into this slaughter field.

  208. Now if you compare Palla to Masada, one listened to God,

  209. followed the warning and was covenanted, covenanted

  210. themselves to the spirit of life and they had victory.

  211. The other side used their own ideas and strength and they

  212. coveted themselves with the spirit of death.

  213. When we do it our way, maybe it is prophetic for the future.

  214. Absolutely. So one was a true refuge where

  215. they were protected, they were sheltered, they were safe, and

  216. the other was a man made refuge that crumbled.

  217. Do we run to Palla or Masada for our refuge?

  218. Do we run to God or do we try and understand everything, make

  219. it happen? Before this time there were six

  220. cities in Israel that were called cities of refuge.

  221. Now you may notice in the Crebbleton on the Main Street

  222. there is a crossing. Not a pedestrian crossing, but

  223. it's got a bit of an island and there's 2 orange or bright

  224. coloured bars that are set in the the crossing and you can

  225. cross half the road. Wait there.

  226. And the cars buzz past you both ways, and then you can cross the

  227. second-half. You know that.

  228. You know what I'm talking about. You're looking at me vacant.

  229. No one's seen it. I've used it.

  230. Sorry. There was one other roundabout.

  231. And there's also. Yeah, one up by, I think the

  232. cafe. Yeah.

  233. By the bridge. Thank you.

  234. Now, I loosely call that a city of refuge because you get

  235. protected from the cars who are going to run you over.

  236. But is it a place of security? Not at all.

  237. I've seen a few of those bars broken, destroyed.

  238. So it's a temporary thing that man's created to provide a

  239. little bit of refuge. But in these ancient times,

  240. these six cities were places that you could go to say, for

  241. example, you accidentally killed someone.

  242. We would call it manslaughter today.

  243. And the family were so upset of the dead person, they were going

  244. to extract revenge. So you could go to one of these

  245. six cities. And the cities were obligated to

  246. keep you safe from a from the family who would come and seek

  247. to take your life. And so these were nominated

  248. places you could go to for the legal system to work properly.

  249. But they didn't protect them from the Romans, eh?

  250. The Romans feel like took over all the laws of the land.

  251. But actually a city of refuge is really an example of Jesus where

  252. you can go to this refuge and the people can't touch you.

  253. You're safe. Do you get the picture?

  254. You go somewhere and you have the peace that you need that's

  255. there. So Pella became a city of refuge

  256. for the Christian believers of the day.

  257. I this might be old news to everybody, but I want to just

  258. reinforce where we're coming from.

  259. So a covenant is a generational spiritual contract.

  260. A biblical covenant is fundamentally a divine and human

  261. agreement established by God's authority, ratified by a

  262. sacrifice, usually a blood sacrifice.

  263. There there are 4 main sacrifices.

  264. The main one was blood supported by promises and obligations on

  265. both sides, and it's designed to display God's steadfast

  266. faithfulness forever. So God's promises are forever

  267. Any any questions on the covenant, It's a lot more

  268. permanent than an agreement, and it's a cost, if you like, of

  269. both sides to engage. But let's talk about a cleft.

  270. I'm not talking about a cleft pallet.

  271. That's different. A cleft is a space or an opening

  272. made by a split or a crack. And it's often used to describe

  273. a gap in a rock that could be used as a hiding place.

  274. A lot of Old Testament heroes had to hide in the cleft of a

  275. rock. Elijah did.

  276. Moses did. Simpson did.

  277. Many times David had to hide in the cleft of a rock to protect

  278. himself from being found. So it's a place of hiding.

  279. You hide in the cleft of the rock because when you're hiding.

  280. It's like you're invisible and a refuge often used in the context

  281. of some danger or sun. In New Zealand, we have an

  282. organization called Woman's Refuge where people can go to be

  283. safe and it's a place and it may even be a cleft where you go

  284. aside to find comfort, shelter and protection.

  285. So just remember those definitions as we go through

  286. this morning. So I have a question, are we in

  287. covenant with Jesus today or are we just acquainted with Jesus?

  288. And I think we need to check the level of intimacy that we

  289. actually do have with Jesus because I suspect we're all

  290. living below our full potential here.

  291. And you can answer that question, are we in covenant by

  292. looking at where we go to instinctively when trouble

  293. happens, what's our go to resource to comfort ourselves to

  294. solve the problem? And often what we do, we do a

  295. trade with Jesus. If you'll do this, then I might

  296. serve you. I remember talking to hearing a

  297. man speak who was a Bishop and at one point he was a nominal

  298. believer and he was in World War 2 and he was in a tank and they

  299. were going into the Battle of El Alamein or something like that.

  300. And he made a deal with God. He says if you'll spare my life

  301. then I will do something in ministry for you.

  302. And he survived the battle and now he says look at me, I'm a

  303. jolly Bishop. I never expected that.

  304. So God took him at his word and the condition was he spared his

  305. life. But there was a if you're like a

  306. trade off that he had to serve in ministry and he was kind of

  307. shocked how it all ended up. But we do that.

  308. If you do this, I'll do that. I don't think that's what God's

  309. wanting us to do today. I think he wants us to be

  310. unconditional. True.

  311. There was a man called Thomas Akimpas, and I just got to check

  312. my dates here. 10 centuries ago, a man who lived 10 centuries ago

  313. wrote this. He had a revelation or an

  314. inspiration that we have our true refuge when we go to the

  315. wounds of Jesus, the wounds of Jesus of the cross.

  316. So you can read that if you want, but we'll go to the next

  317. slide. And so I want to share quite a

  318. bit on this picture here, which is the spear piercing the side

  319. of Jesus. I don't find this core very

  320. interesting. It's kind of it's going to trip

  321. me up. And so we know about the

  322. crucifixion because we talk about it every Easter season, do

  323. we not? I want to share.

  324. There's a whole lot more going on in that crucifixion time than

  325. we actually ever look at or have time to go into.

  326. There's probably a mini sermon series on what took place in the

  327. crucifixion. And it's spiritual, It's it's

  328. barbaric, it's unjust, but there's a spiritual warfare

  329. battle taking place that we are not taught about, that there are

  330. things happening behind the scenes in the heavenly realm

  331. that are huge for us today. But it's also a time of extreme

  332. unconditional love poured out by Jesus.

  333. And so the the act of sacrifice that took place by Jesus.

  334. And I believe there was a supernatural shift that took

  335. place when the spear hit his side.

  336. What I'm sharing this morning may be a revelation to you.

  337. You may not actually understand it, or you may not respond well

  338. to it, but I suggest that you meditate on it because, like I

  339. said, the revelation that we've had up till now was OK for the

  340. times. We're living in different times.

  341. We need all the power of God that is available to us, and so

  342. we need to understand where that comes from.

  343. You will remember the scripture that says that two things poured

  344. out from the side of Jesus when the spear went into his, into

  345. his body. What were those two things,

  346. people? Blood and water.

  347. What happens when a baby is born in the natural blood?

  348. Same thing, Blood and water, Absolutely.

  349. So my question is, what was born on the cross?

  350. Yeah. So there was something happened

  351. at that moment. We have people who say they are

  352. Christian and they say they are Christian because they are born

  353. again. If you heard that phrase, born

  354. again. And so then we add the phrase,

  355. Well, I've given my heart to Jesus, and they have.

  356. And so that is like an understandable thing, but I want

  357. to add that something else was born at that time as well, not

  358. just the fact that of the church arriving, because I believe

  359. Jesus wants us to receive his heart as well.

  360. So we give our heart to Jesus, but at the other half of the

  361. covenant, he's giving his heart to us.

  362. That's different, isn't it? Two sides of a covenant.

  363. We've only done one side because what happened when the spear

  364. went into his side, it must have gone through his lungs into the

  365. now I have a word for this pericardium fluid that had

  366. accumulated around his heart because he wasn't breathing

  367. properly. It wasn't, if you like being

  368. cleared, I've got medical people in the room, maybe.

  369. And so there was a release of the fluid around the heart that

  370. has accumulated. That's the water.

  371. So his heart was exposed to the world through the channel of the

  372. spear. His heart was open for us to

  373. access in the physical. His heart physically was exposed

  374. by the spear. Now spiritually, he's also

  375. saying today, right now, I'm cutting a new covenant with you

  376. and I'm ratifying it and sealing it with my own blood.

  377. Covenant needed a sacrifice. Jesus himself provided the

  378. sacrifice and cut the covenant with us.

  379. And so with that covenant, we now have authority and abilities

  380. that we've never used as the church until this time.

  381. And it's like his wound can be a type of a cleft.

  382. Remember, a cleft was a sorry, it's a hiding place.

  383. Yeah, a split. And So what that means is we can

  384. hide in the wounds of Jesus and we'll never be found by the

  385. enemy. We do not need to fear anything

  386. or anybody because we have been promised a covenant relationship

  387. with Jesus. Did you know that so

  388. spiritually, Jesus offered us his heart.

  389. There's a saying in the world where they talk about Blood

  390. Brothers. Have you heard this thing?

  391. Blood Brothers. So we become, if you like,

  392. inseparable. And the deal is something like

  393. this. If anyone messes with me, then

  394. they've got both of us to mess with.

  395. Because if it affects you, it affects me.

  396. I can tell you a story about our son.

  397. We were in England and my son had his hand in a bandage in a

  398. sling and a drunk Irishman came up to him random on the street.

  399. My son was wearing a an Irish shirt with the word Guinness

  400. written on it. So this Irishman recognized a

  401. kindred spirit and he says, oh, I see you've been in a bit of a

  402. wars. Ah, you can't trust the bloody

  403. English. I'll tell you what he says.

  404. If they give you any more crap, they've got the both of us to

  405. deal with. By the way, can you lend us a

  406. favour for a beer? So he was wanting Jeremy, our

  407. son, to be a blood brother. That was very harsh environment.

  408. But using that analogy, if someone messes with you and you

  409. are in covenant with Jesus, who are they messing with?

  410. So when we are in some difficult situation, are we on our own?

  411. If we're in covenant with Jesus, they're messing with Jesus.

  412. Does Jesus lose? Did Jesus lose the battle with

  413. Satan? No, we are committed or tight

  414. with our Lord and when we have that knowledge, it changes how

  415. we see the problems that we are in.

  416. They are not insurmountable because Jesus does not lose.

  417. Just imagine this, you're having something that's going wrong in

  418. your life and instead of complaining, instead of running

  419. to your false refuge, you run to pray to Jesus.

  420. And it's like He's there waiting for you and his arms are open

  421. wide as a welcome. You run to Jesus, He puts his

  422. arm around you, you feel his wounds and you tell him how you

  423. feel like David did in his Psalm.

  424. You pour your heart out, you tell him and he says, no, that's

  425. not going to happen. You're safe with me, you're safe

  426. with me and you just shift. Why?

  427. Because you're not on your own and you're in your refuge.

  428. So Jesus can be our refuge at every time that we access him by

  429. talking to him and praying to him.

  430. So with Jesus you will feel safe, sheltered, protected,

  431. loved, and you know you're in your refuge because I believe

  432. Jesus is the name above all names.

  433. There's nothing on the earth that could happen to you that

  434. has authority over the name of Jesus.

  435. We sang about that this morning. Power in the name of Jesus.

  436. So what are we scared of when we are covenanted with Jesus?

  437. So what keeps us from this intimacy with Jesus?

  438. And one of the answers is our own personal false refuges that

  439. we have built up and run to. Let's look at some of those

  440. things. There's a list.

  441. I think there's about 500 things that could be on the list, but

  442. there's some of them. The obvious one is addictions.

  443. Sometimes it's food and drink, if I have to be honest, and

  444. other people may confirm this for me.

  445. The addiction could be going on social media to distract myself,

  446. but more importantly, to find answers in my own mind, to

  447. understand everything. Do you do that?

  448. Something goes wrong, you want to understand.

  449. So social media, the Internet gives us answers, but they're

  450. never as good as God's answers. The wisdom that God has, the

  451. foolishness of God, is still greater than the wisdom of man.

  452. So there may be some things there that are on the list that

  453. affect you. So where do we go when things go

  454. wrong? We go to our false refuges

  455. instead of our Saviour. And I'm suggesting it's a

  456. pattern that we've set up. It's not something we

  457. deliberately do, but it's our flesh crying out for comfort.

  458. And so just in a moment of silence, just in your own

  459. prayer, ask God to reveal what it is that is your refuge that

  460. you run to instead of telling Jesus.

  461. The problem is when we create a false refuge around us, we shut

  462. out God. We create a tower around us to,

  463. if you like, keep us distant and even if you like, reduce the

  464. intimacy that we can experience with Jesus.

  465. We don't want to be locked in our own tower.

  466. We want to have access to the the heavenlies at all times.

  467. And I think that's what God's saying to us this morning.

  468. Don't lock yourself up in your own refuge of your own making,

  469. because we have Palla and Masada.

  470. Masada people did it their own way, Palla They did it God's

  471. way, and they covenanted with life.

  472. If we go a bit deeper than that, sometimes we've got to wonder

  473. how these refuges came to be there.

  474. And we have things called vows and mottos which can be

  475. negative. And they actually created the

  476. false idols which led to those false refuges.

  477. And it gives the enemy a legal right to 1st deceive us with

  478. some temporary relief. And we want relief from our

  479. problems. But then the enemy has access to

  480. our mind to continue to torment us and to steal her peace.

  481. Later on, I'll give you some examples of vows people could

  482. make right. No one will ever tell me what to

  483. do again. Trust me to make a mistake.

  484. God only answers other special people's prayers.

  485. My relationships will always fail.

  486. I always get sick and I'm not good enough for Jesus to care

  487. about. I expect to get rejected so I'll

  488. always keep my walls nice and high.

  489. All my friends are in hell, so I got I want to go there so I can

  490. party with them. That's what people think.

  491. That's the vow or the controlling influence on their

  492. life. I'll give you another example.

  493. Say you are stressed in your life and your body is in pain

  494. because of the stress, and you think I can go and do something

  495. to relieve the pain in my body. And so you go into a yoga class.

  496. Yoga is stretching, but it's from a Buddhist spirituality and

  497. it invokes poses of worship to foreign occult gods which will

  498. enter your life to later harass you when they have the

  499. opportunity. It's very dangerous but looks

  500. benign. So you go to yoga and you

  501. relieve the stress in your body. What have you done?

  502. You've made yourself open to a false idol, which then replaces

  503. Jesus in your life. You can't.

  504. You can't live with both this one or the other.

  505. So it blocks us from again, in a moment of silence.

  506. I want you to release those false idols, the ones that God's

  507. been speaking to you about, and maybe He's been speaking to you

  508. about them earlier than than today and you're aware of them,

  509. the patterns that you've got, the thinking that you've got.

  510. Ask God how and when they were established to get to the source

  511. of what it is. Because that's the thing with

  512. the yoga. You went for temporary relief.

  513. You didn't go to the source and knock out the cause because God

  514. wants to heal your emotional hurts and your emotional wounds.

  515. He doesn't want to put a bandage on it for one day.

  516. And So what is that automatic thought that we go to when we're

  517. under stress? Is it to pray to Jesus?

  518. So let's bow your heads and ask the Lord to speak to you now, to

  519. release you from the power of those false refuges.

  520. I'm praying for change to be broken.

  521. I'm praying for healing and restoration to covenant

  522. relationship with Jesus Christ. It's interesting that the word

  523. refuge is mentioned 140 times in Scripture.

  524. The word refuge is mentioned 44 times in the Psalms.

  525. It's a theme, it's a pattern. God wants to us to deal with our

  526. refuges. And there are promises all

  527. through scripture that He will heal us and release us.

  528. Psalm 91.9 to 10. If you make the Most High your

  529. dwelling, even the Lord who is my refuge, then no harm will

  530. befall you, no disaster will come near your tent.

  531. And there's a promise of new life.

  532. And as the soldiers pierced aside with a spear, at once

  533. there came out blood and water. John 1934, new birth.

  534. I don't want anyone to leave here today or anyone who's

  535. listening in the sound of my voice.

  536. Not to finish this without knowing there are in a covenant

  537. relationship with Jesus. We need to make some

  538. declarations this morning to put yourself into that blood brother

  539. concept where no one messes with us because they're messing with

  540. Jesus as well. That's his promise.

  541. That's our inheritance. That's our destiny.

  542. There's a prayer on the bottom of the screen.

  543. I want you to read it before you say it.

  544. I don't want you to say something.

  545. That's not what you believe. What I'll do.

  546. I'll read out the first line, and if you are willing, you can

  547. repeat line by line. I declare that the risen,

  548. victorious Lord Jesus Christ is my true refuge.

  549. I make Him my dwelling place, my true refuge.

  550. I hide myself in the cleft of His side, and so no harm can

  551. overtake me, no disaster will overcome me because I am reborn

  552. through Jesus. Amen.

  553. I talked last time about the tassels of the prayer shawl of

  554. Jesus, and the woman with the issue of blood had 100%

  555. certainty that she would be healed.

  556. Would we want to have that feeling?

  557. When we pray? We know that we're being heard

  558. and that our prayer will be answered.

  559. And it's like we're holding on to that prayer shore and we'll

  560. say this together. It's a prayer of confession to

  561. break off the hold of those false refuges.

  562. I confess I have not gone to you first as my true refuge.

  563. Just think on that. Where do we go first?

  564. And I now list those false refuges that I have used

  565. instead. I repent and say Jesus, I am

  566. sorry for not trusting you completely and now I renounce

  567. all false refuges and say I no longer give them any power over

  568. my life. I ask that you open my eyes to

  569. the bad patterns that I have been using and you would release

  570. to me Your truth, Your grace, Your healing into my soul.

  571. Now, I don't want to pray for that happen to you right now.

  572. That you would know the truth of scripture and it would set you

  573. free. Know the truth that will set you

  574. free. Jesus is waiting with open arms

  575. to comfort you and it's like his heartbeat and your heartbeat

  576. beating is 1. And we think we're unworthy.

  577. But the grace of God covers a multitude of sins.

  578. I release the grace over you all this morning.

  579. You would know the grace of God, the absolute unconditional love

  580. of a Father or a parent for a child.

  581. You are the child. He loves you.

  582. And I pray for healing in your soul the patterns that have been

  583. established, the vows, the mottos.

  584. Lord, you would heal all of it. You would go to those deep

  585. places, the inner child maybe, and just bring your gentle

  586. healing so that we are stronger and more connected with our

  587. Saviour Jesus. Receive the healing in response

  588. to your heartfelt prayer. When we pray from the depths of

  589. our heart, God on us, He delights in you, crying out to

  590. Him in despair, knowing that He can restore everything, even the

  591. years the locusts have eaten, he can restore that.

  592. Don't live in the past, don't live and regret.

  593. Don't have self shame coming to the surface that you're not good

  594. enough. You are because you're under

  595. grace. Have a read of the last sentence

  596. or last prayer which says I decree, and if you agree with

  597. it, we'll say it together. Because like King David, he

  598. started with a decree and he finished with a decree.

  599. We decreed A Psalm at the start of this message.

  600. We're going to make a declaration at the end of this

  601. message. And what we're saying, we're

  602. saying who we belong to. We are saying we accept the

  603. covenant that Jesus made at the cross.

  604. So you leave here knowing you're in covenant relationship with

  605. Jesus if you choose to pray this prayer.

  606. And we see ourselves very differently because we're not on

  607. our own. We personally may not be an

  608. overcomer on our own strength, but with Jesus we will be.

  609. We become overcomers and He is our true refuge.

  610. Every time things go badly, we go to Jesus.

  611. We tell Him we're OK. Are we ready to pray?

  612. The Declaration? I decree that I am redeemed by

  613. the blood of Jesus and I am in covenant relationship with Him

  614. alone and through Jesus. I am an overcomer and I walk

  615. fully in His truth. Amen.

  616. How does that feel, people, to pray something like that?

  617. You leave here in covenant relationship with Jesus and

  618. you're not going to be tossed around by the things of the

  619. future. He has the answers, everything

  620. we need. We don't have to understand by

  621. going on Google anymore. Thanks for joining us at Omega.

  622. If you need prayer for healing or breakthrough, or simply to

  623. find out more, please head to our website or Facebook page in

  624. the links below.