Building Your World With Words 2

Let's wave our Bibles around and make Jesus glad and the devil mad.

Let's say this together Say Heavenly Father, I'm so glad to be here today.

I'm here to receive the Word of God.

I feed on the Word.

I'm a person of the Word, I'm a person of my Word and I'm a person of prayer.

Therefore, lord, I'm constructing my world.

I'm tearing out stuff that's not working, I'm replacing it with things that do.

I'm closer to you than ever before and I'm moving in victory in Jesus' name.

Amen, you can be seated.

Let's turn in our Bibles to Hebrews 11.

And we want to continue our message series entitled Building your World with Words, and Hebrews 11, verse 1.

Hebrews 11:1

Now, faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen For.

By it.

That is by faith, the elders obtained a good report.

Through faith, we understand that the worlds were framed by the Word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.

And I want to read the Barclay translation of verse 3.

It is by faith that we understand that the universe was constructed by the Word of God, for the scene had to take its origin from the unseen.

Isn't that good?

For the scene had to take its origin from the unseen, and so building your world with words.

The whole world was built with words.

People say, you know, sticks and stones can break my bones, but words will never hurt me.

Well, that's a lie.

Words can make you or they can break you.

You know the worlds here.

In the amplified verse 3, it says that this way the worlds were framed, fashioned, put in order and equipped for their intended purpose by the Word of God.

I mean, when you get the Word of God in your mouth, you can change your world, you can cause it to move into its purpose, for which you came.

I mean, we're all people of destiny, we're all people of purpose.

God chose us to live in the last of the last days.

You know, technically, the last days began when Jesus was on the earth, but that's been over 2,000 years ago.

I mean, you know the clock is ticking.

You know we're in the countdown phase.

You know we were living the city of countdowns.

And you know, a few years ago God gave me the year 2001.

He said this is a premier year and it's going to be a year of firsts.

And I got the idea of Hollywood, you know, with the spotlights and the premiere movie and all of that kind of thing where the Hollywood stars come up on the red carpet and you know they don't do that anymore, they just release it on video.

But anyway, regardless, not worth going to movies anymore.

Anyway, it's ridiculous.

But I saw a really good one last night Charlton Heston and Ben Hurd.

That's worth watching.

I'm sure it had a glorious premiere when it premiered in Hollywood and that's what I saw.

And then I saw these spotlights.

And then he said then I saw 2001, comma 2002, comma dot, dot, dot.

It's the first in a series of years.

Well, that's been, you know, 23, 22 years ago now.

You know he was talking to me about the end days.

God is marking the end time.

We're in a countdown, the final phases.

I'm not predicting what day or time, we don't know that, but we know it's near.

So we've got to do something about our worlds.

You know, sometimes our worlds are out of sync.

They're out of you know, they're hurting, they're, they're, they're not in order.

See, the word will put your world in order.

God can't bless a mess.

I said God can't bless a mess.

He's not the author of a mess.

You know, there are people that believe that this whole universe came with a big bang theory.

Well, they're, you know, they're not.

They don't have enough brains to you know, if brains was gunpowder they couldn't pop a paper bag.

I mean, they don't give me a break.

It wasn't created by a bang, it was created by God, with words, all right.

So in the Genesis account of creation, we saw over and over.

God said and God saw.

God said and God saw he created the world.

That way, everybody say God said and God saw.

Say so, sound becomes before sight.

If you ever want to see something, you're going to have to make a sound.

You're going to have to, you're going to have to say something Amen.

And so we talked about that.

If you ever want to see it, you're going to have.

Of course, you've got to have faith in your heart For what you say will come to pass.

We talked about a Mark 11, 23 where it says believe one time in Jesus.

Jesus spoke Mark 11, 23.

He was teaching the disciples about faith and he said believe one time.

And he said say, or some version of say, three times.

And there's three words that mean say.

One of them is is Epo, which means just to say or to command.

And then another word, that that's Lego, which means to have a systematic discourse.

You know, it's not about saying something one time and forgetting about it.

No, you've got to develop a systematic discourse.

In other words, you're saying it over and over, with faith in your heart, and you begin to construct the way God did.

Are you with me now?

And so we went back to Mark, chapter four, where the parable of the sower sows the word, and we found four different individuals that Jesus talked about.

Each one of them sowed the word of God in their heart.

Each one of them did, but three, four, seven had a crop failure.

You know, the first one was the stolen word, the next one was the scorched word, the next one was the strangled word and the last one was the safeguarded word.

And their words, after they sowed, had everything to do with whether they had a crop, for instance.

You know the one that that sowed the word.

And you know, and he says the cares of this world, the deceitfulness of riches, the lusts of other things entering in, entering in where, to his heart, to his spirit, choked the word and it became unfruitful.

Well, where did all that come from?

Where did the cares of the world, the deceitfulness of riches, the lust of other things.

How did that enter in?

Well, the same way that the word entered in through the mouth, they started talking about their trouble.

They started talking about how bad things are.

They started talking about oh man, the Democrats are killing me.

Well, you know, we don't have to talk all about it to know it's true.

Let's talk about what God is doing.

God's doing something right now.

Praise God, we're here.

The church is still here.

We've got something to say about what's going on, amen.

So so that we've discovered, then, that the whole kingdom in Mark, chapter four, verse 26, jesus, the whole kingdom, operates on the seed sowing principle.

A whole kingdom.

If you want to do kingdom business, you're going to have to get your mouth moving and you're going to have to speak God's word in a systematic way, not just willy-nilly, not just when you feel like it.

You've got to develop that that consistency, inconsistency, lies the power for the God.

And so the whole kingdom is based on words, and we found out that the seed is the word of God and ground is the heart of the spirit.

And Barkley says that the things that are seen take their origin from the unseen.

You know, when you plant a seed it's unseen.

You don't see anything.

I mean, you got you can have a whole thousand acre field of sorghum and when they planted it it doesn't look like they did anything.

It's just a bunch of dirt out there.

But you know, in a little while, all of a sudden a little green thing starts sticking up.

I grew up in South Texas where they had a lot of green down there between Referio and Corpus Christus, thousands and thousands and thousands of acres.

I grew up down there after born here in Houston.

But I spent my growing up years, from the fourth grade through high school, down in South Texas and I had to go through that country for years and years.

I went through there during harvest season.

I went there through planting season.

I went through there, through there when there was nothing going on, just dirt.

But I'm telling you, it works and so does your faith.

Your faith will produce a crop if you'll develop a systematic discourse.

So it was invisible and then it springs up and then you know you've got everything to do with whether you have a crop or not.

It's not God.

We really can't even blame.

We can't even really blame the devil.

Really the devil can't stop the seed sowing process.

I said the devil cannot stop the seed sowing process, unless, of course, he can stop your mouth.

You know you get so discouraged that you quit speaking correctly or consistently.

So last week we talked about the ways to build your world with words and we talked about being a person of the word.

Being a person of your word, being a person of prayer.

I wanted to focus in today on one of those ways to build your world be a person of the word.

Be a person of the word, and we're going to have to get acquainted with what's in the word about ourselves 130 times and I mentioned this last week, but I want to say it again because people are new and people haven't heard these things before sometimes.

But the new Testament, especially the epistles, is where we ought to spend most of our time reading the Bible.

I know people you know try to start reading their Bible and they started Genesis.

That's where I started years ago, before I got saved.

I knew the Bible was important and I grew up Catholic and they didn't emphasize Bible reading.

In fact, the emphasis was that you just listened to the priest, because he went to seminary cemetery seminary for 12 years and they knew all you needed to know about the Bible.

Don't bother reading the Bible, you can't understand it.

Well, no, if you're lost, you can't understand it.

It's not written to you.

You got to be a child of God.

But anyway, I started in Genesis, you know, and that wasn't too bad.

Exodus, I wasn't too bad Boy.

When I got to Leviticus I slowed way down.

I mean I gave up in Leviticus.

I'm plowing my way through Leviticus right now.

I mean I still have to plow my way through the meal offerings, the meat offerings, the peace offerings, the trespass offerings, all those dead animals, man, all that fried in the pan, bake it in the, you know, bake a loaf, bake a cake.

I mean you know you go through there.

And man, I mean you talk about the leprosy and talk about how to cleanse the leper and you know it's all valuable.

But I mean really I can't stay there all year I'm going to go through there and about once a year I'll get through the Old Testament Any more.

It takes me more like two years to get through the Old Testament, wow.

Well, I've already read it many times and I spend most of my time in the epistles, because the epistles.

You know, paul writing to the church at Thessalonica, to the Galatians, to the Corinthians.

Well, those are to us and for us, all the Bibles for us, but only the epistles are specifically to us.

Now, god can use any of the word.

He can use the Old Testament and Ramies done that many times for me, so you should read it.

But you know to feed on it 130 times in the epistles that says something like in Christ, in him, in whom, in the Lord, through him, and so forth.

For instance, in 2 Corinthians 517, it says if any man be in Christ, everybody shouts that's me.

See, you're in Christ.

The minute you get born again, the baptism, the Holy Ghost baptizes you into Christ, into the body of Christ.

See, there's three baptisms.

We teach that in faith foundations.

There's three baptisms.

You know the baptism in water, which we do from time to time.

We've got a baptismal right behind me and we baptize on Sunday night.

Jay's my son, jay the baptizer, we call him, and so we baptize new believers or people that have never been baptized.

And then you've got the baptism into Christ.

When you get saved, the Holy Ghost baptizes you into the body of Christ.

He takes you and you become one with Christ.

And then of course, there's the baptism in the Holy Ghost, with evidence of speaking in other tongues.

So three baptisms in the Bible.

So if any man be in Christ and you're in Christ the moment you get born again, then that man is a new creature or a new creation, or a new species of being that never before existed.

God, what a powerful thing.

So that's who you are.

You can't see that when you look in the mirror.

You can go and look in the mirror and you look the same as you did.

You know, of course, the older you get, you don't look the same as you used to.

See, I'm looking at myself in the mirror and I keep reminding well, that's not you.

You are virile, you are strong, you are handsome.

You were six foot three.

That's my spirit man.

My spirit man is cramped.

It's crammed into this body just under pressure.

You know it had to pump me up, all right.

So everybody say I'm a new creature.

Old things are passed away.

See, your past is gone.

Yesterday's gone, five minutes ago is gone, five seconds ago is gone.

That's the Greek.

I mean old things are passed away.

It's a.

The tense on that verb means continual transformation.

Come on, lift your hands right now.

I mean that ought to encourage you not to live in failure.

I mean, god doesn't see failures, he sees learners.

So he said old things are passed away and behold.

My dad used to say look at him now.

Look at behold means look at him.

Everybody say look at him now.

All things are become new, all things.

Everybody say all things.

What does that mean?

It means all, all things, all things about you have become new.

Who's you?

You're a spirit Now.

Your body's the same, your mind, you know.

That's why we have to work on our mind.

We have to renew our mind.

We have to be, we have to turn away from the world's way of thinking.

Be transformed by the renewing of your mind.

Don't be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.

So don't get stuck in this world's way of thinking.

Get over here in God's thoughts and begin to think the way God thinks, and then you'll start talking like God talks.

So, and then you keep reading, and it's worth looking at second Corinthians five, this whole.

You know, I got a hold of these things so many years ago, brother Osteen, teaching me to have a good confession.

What do you confess.

Well, you say what the Bible says about you.

You are who the Bible says you are.

You can do what the Bible says you can do.

You can have what the Bible says you can have.

That was our confession every time we came to church.

Second Corinthians, chapter five if any man, therefore, if any man, everybody shout that's me.

Be in Christ.

He is a new creature.

Old things have passed away.

Behold, all things have become new and all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself through Jesus Christ and have given to us the ministry of reconciliation.

What does reconcile mean?

Well, it means, you know, god already reconciled himself to you before you were even saved.

What does reconcile?

He already loved you, he already paid the price for you to be saved.

He is kindly affection toward you, even though you're yet a sinner.

I'm in there and I'm making my own beer.

Drinking my own beer cause it's 14% alcohol, so I can get a little bit better charge satisfy my desire to feel better about myself and about my situation.

So I just get about, you know, moderately, half drunk, most every day.

Drinking my own beer, cause to drink enough beer to equal my beer I would have had to buy.

Case after case, it becomes a volume thing.

I mean, do I really want to drink two cases of beer a day when I can just go to my fridge and get four long necks and I can do the same thing?

See, even while I was in that condition, god had already reconciled himself to me through Jesus Christ.

And when I see, he didn't just start loving me after I got.

He loved me right in the middle of my mess.

He loved me while I was still doing all this crazy stuff, trying to.

You know, I had a God shaped hole in my heart and I was trying to fit alcohol into it.

I was trying to, I was trying to do anything to satisfy that lack of peace.

Are you with me now?

But he already.

He's not mad at you.

He never was mad at you.

He he's kindly affection to you.

Why?

Because Jesus did it all on the cross While we were yet sinners.

Christ died for us.

Is it any less than once we get saved?

Is he gonna get mad at us and try to beat us in the head with a two by four?

No, I don't know who this is for, but I mean, you know we're new creature.

Old things are passed away.

All things are of God let's keep reading who has reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ and has given to us the ministry of reconciliation.

Hey brother, let me tell you about my life, man, I once was saved, but you know what?

I came into Jesus and he changed my entire life.

He'll do the same for you.

See, we've got a ministry.

We can sit in the witness chair and tell people about Jesus.

That's what we ought to be doing right now.

People need Jesus.

Have you discovered how people need Jesus out there?

Yeah, to wit, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses under them and has committed unto us the word of reconciliation.

See, there's that idea again that God is expecting us.

Who have been, who recognize that we're indeed saved, that we're new creatures, that old things are passed away behold, all things are becoming new.

We need that.

We've got a ground to go.

Share that testimony with other people that don't know what we know.

He's going to lead you into the ripe harvest there's.

People are ripe to come to the Lord right now.

We're right on the cusp of the greatest awakening this world has ever seen.

I'm convinced of it.

So, and then he says now, then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us.

We pray you in Christ did.

Be you reconciled to God.

See, if God turned kindly to us.

He's talking to the Corinthian church.

Now, look, quit messing around in the see.

They were carnal, they were body ruled, they were doing things they shouldn't do.

He's writing them a corrective letter.

They were putting up with sin in the church.

They had a man, a young man that was, you know, living with his stepmother and open sin in the church, and nobody did anything about it.

Nobody said a word about it.

Listen, you can't do that.

You can't do that.

And so he said now, look, since God has already reconciled himself to you, you be reconciled to him.

Reconciled just means hey, turn away from all that and turn and draw near to him.

He drew near to you already and now draw near to him.

Are y'all getting this?

Because verse 21, here's a wonderful one.

You need to say this every day, because he has made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.

I say that every day, father, I thank you that Jesus was made to be sin for me.

I'm the righteousness of God in Christ.

Hallelujah, I am the righteousness of God.

Brother Hagin was teaching along these lines and he was in a church, you know, good, full gospel church.

How many of you have heard of this?

How many of you are righteous?

This morning, about three hands came up.

What was wrong?

Well, they hadn't developed.

They hadn't developed in the Word of God.

They haven't identified themselves as righteous, even though God did.

I heard a preacher once say well, you know, we're just all sinners saved by grace, not me, buddy.

I was a sinner, but I'm no longer a sinner.

That, see, that's wrong.

That's just a bunch of religious bunk.

That's not the word.

That's not who we are.

I am not a sinner.

I was a sinner, but now I'm the righteousness of God in Christ.

Yeah, I'm not bragging on me, I'm bragging on the finished work.

So you see, then, that this idea of substitution and identification let's all say that substitution and identification, the olive redemption hinges on these two words substitution and identification.

Redemption, restored to the original condition, return to the original owner.

Redemption that's what red?

That's really a quick way of thinking about what is redemption.

What is it?

Well, you know, adam sold out to the devil.

So the human race came under the ownership and under the lordship of the devil.

That wasn't God's plan.

And the devil does something nowadays and in some preacher will stand up or some believer will stand up and say, well, god is in control.

Well, no, no, he's not in control.

God is an overall control, but he's not see.

The implication is that evil happened because God allowed it.

No, god didn't allow it.

It came because of the fall.

It came because the devil's lease is not yet run out in this earth and there are evil things going on, not because God wants it to happen, but because of the fall of Adam.

Adam was supposed to rule and reign, and we were supposed to rule and reign.

Guess what Jesus restored?

He redeemed us, he gave us his authority, he gave us his name and now we can rule and reign Over our world.

Say, our world.

We don't have to let the devil wreck our world.

We don't have to let the devil run, run a muck in our world.

What, what world are you talking about?

Well, our home, in our life, our bodies, our minds.

Amen, all right.

So he was our substitute, so we could be his substitute.

That's exactly.

I've given you the word of reconciliation.

Now you, you be reconciled to me and you go tell other people that they can be reconciled because I already Reconcile myself to them.

They don't know it.

You can go tell them, you're my ambassador.

What's an ambassador?

Well, you know, it's somebody that represents a foreign government.

See, look, we're citizens of heaven.

We live on this earth and, yeah, we're citizens.

Most of us are citizens of America and in the natural, but in the supernatural, we're really in the kingdom, where our citizenship is in heaven, and we're ambassadors.

We represent the king.

That's a governmental term, isn't it?

Ambassador?

So he was our substitute, so we can be his substitute.

He identified with our humanity, so we can identify with his divinity.

Let that sink in.

Oh, that sounds like we're God.

No, we're not God, but we are Jesus, we're in him.

We're the only Jesus some people are ever gonna see.

When they see you, they see Jesus.

So what are you showing it?

Are you showing them a bunch of bunk?

Are you showing them a bunch of religious Baloney?

Are you sure I'm a bunch of flesh?

No, let's.

Let's show them the real Jesus.

Let's show and how you do that.

We got to be a person of the word.

You got to get the word down in your heart, where you believe it.

Everybody say identity.

See, your voice is your address In the spirit realm.

If you've got an identity, you've got an address, I mean.

I mean what?

What good would an identity be if you didn't have a place to get the packages mailed, or you didn't have a place to you know, to live, you didn't have a center of operation?

See, your identity, your, your, your address is your voice.

Your voice is your address in the spirit realm when God hears your voice.

Oh, yeah, they're, they're coming up there, they are.

Yeah, if you don't speak where you know there's no, there's no, there's no communicate.

Where's my ambassador?

What happened to my ambassador in Houston?

Huh, where are they?

They all they happen to say anything.

Oh, I guess they retired, I guess they're dead, I guess they got voted out.

We lost one of those State Department people.

They finally stepped down.

Boy, what a.

I can't think of her name.

I've heard about her for years.

Thank God she's gone.

There's more and more of them are leaving all the time.

Praise God.

Everybody say identity.

See, we live in a time when stolen identities I mean people get their identity stolen.

You ever have your credit.

I think I've had three credit cards last year.

People sneak in there and they try to steal my credit card.

I don't know how they get it, usually online.

They've got all kinds of things.

You know, they've got these roving gangs that stick these card readers up by the gas pump so that when you put your credit card in there to pay for your gas it reads your credit card and they'll run.

They'll come by there later and they have a reader and they download all of the credit cards and they just go down the list trying to see what they can steal and you know I'll get a text or I'll get a phone call from a credit card.

Did you do this?

Did you charge this?

And I'll say nope and we shut it down.

One time I was checking in to a hotel in another town and I gave my American Express card.

You know, and I don't remember I mean I didn't call it out loud, I didn't say the number out loud, but I noticed there was this couple of people sitting in the lobby and they just kept sitting there right there by the door, close to the thing, and I didn't notice them.

And then, after I got my bags and started up, I noticed they left.

Well, they went to Home Depot with my credit card number and charged $1,100 worth of stuff and this works, of course.

I got a notice right now and I said, nope, I think they called them because they tried another place and by the time they got to that other place.

I mean, you know stolen identities, you know it happens and people they identify.

You know many people identify with movie stars or they identify with sports figures, or maybe they identify with a nationality or a race, or maybe they'll identify with something that happened, like mothers against drunk driving.

So they go to the mothers against drunk driving meeting and so they're fellowshiping with mothers that's had some tragedy about drunk driving or how about parents of murdered children.

So you have an identity.

You identify with other victims of a horrible thing.

You identify with negative, you identify with a bad thing.

I'm not saying those organizations are bad, I'm just saying people identify with all kinds of things.

But what we ought to be identifying with, we ought to be identifying with the finished work or the cross.

We ought to be identifying with a one who paid it all out for us.

You know they.

You know A, a alcoholics and nones.

I've known some guys friends of mine were were drunks, you know, and I knew them.

When they were drunks they couldn't leave the bottle alone, they just rink the hard stuff.

You start off with beer, but then somehow it takes so much beer that you graduate to liquor.

And I just one friend of mine, he just was a drunk all the time, just drunk every day.

Of course I was right there with him, but I wasn't quite as drunk, I just kinda high a little bit.

I was on my way to being alcoholic.

I know, if I'd have just lasted a few more years the way I was headed, I'm sure I would have been addicted, but I never was addicted.

Addiction, man, that's a devil.

I said that's a devil.

And so you go to A A and well, you got the higher power, see they.

They say, well, you're higher power, whoever you call God.

Well, see, that right, there is not for you and me, because we know who God is and we know Jesus, so we don't have a higher power to identify with.

But you know, they tell you, they teach you to look in the mirror and say I'm a drunk and I've been sober now four years, three months, two days and 15 minutes and 14 seconds.

They're white-nuckling, they're sobriety.

They confess over and over they are drunk.

No, you don't confess that.

I'm a new creature.

Old things are past.

I've been delivered by the blood of Jesus.

Thank God, the name of Jesus keeps me free.

Does that give me a license to go down to the bar and keep drinking?

No, it does not.

You better stay away from that stuff because it's you know, it's an addictive chemical.

Alcohol is just as the connective is drugged, just as people.

People say well, marijuana it's not so bad.

Marijuana is evil.

It's the gateway into all of this stuff.

Quit smoking marijuana.

If you're doing it.

Well, it helps my pain, we'll find.

Listen, jesus took your pain.

See, again, you identify when the wrong thing.

Let's not identify with that.

Let's identify with a finished work.

Are you getting anything out of this now?

Glory to God.

Let's identify with a finished work of redemption.

Let's look at Titus right before Hebrews.

Getting anything out of this today?

Titus three, verse five not by works of righteousness, which we have done.

We've all done good.

We fed the poor, we help out in church, we help people.

You know.

Not by works of righteousness, which we have done.

See, we're not saved by good works.

But we have good works.

We ought to have good works associated with our salvation.

If you're saved, you ought to want to do good.

But the doing good doesn't save you.

I did good before I got saved, but it didn't save me.

Not by works of righteousness, which we have done, but according to his mercy, according to his hesed covenant obligation.

He saved us.

How?

By the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost which he, god, have shed abundantly, shed on us abundantly through Jesus Christ, our Savior Woo.

I love those verses.

He didn't just barely save us.

He shed this washing of regeneration and this renewing of the Holy Ghost.

He shed it on us abundantly through Jesus Christ, our Savior.

We're not just barely saved.

We're not some sinner, saved by grace.

I'm telling you.

We've been washed in the blood, regenerated, born again.

New creatures, old things are passed away, all things become new.

We've been given a ministry.

It's called the Believer's Ministry.

Glory to God, woo.

Come on, lift your hand right now.

Lord, I thank you for your mercy.

I thank you for your faithfulness over the covenant.

You reconciled yourself to us even while we were yet sinners.

Lord, even how much more are you kindly favored to us as we have been born again and new creatures.

Glory to God.

So we ought to pick up when we read our Bibles and I teach people to read your Bibles I mean you have to read it and it's good if you meditate on it.

What is meditate?

Just think about it, turn it over, over and over and over.

I can quote whole passages of Scripture, not because I try to memorize but because it's in my spirit.

After 40 some odd years of reading the Bible, it finally gets out.

I remember when I first got saved my mouth would fly open.

I just couldn't understand, brother, those things.

He could just quote half of the Ephesians.

Just stand flat-footed and just quote it.

You know, quote it.

I just come pouring out of him, never even looked down at his Bible.

Here I am, I've got the.

Did you have a Bible with all these little dividers in it?

You know that you had to.

I didn't know where Titus was.

I had to have this little thing on there and to read it.

Oh, there's Titus.

You know, then I, I mean I, finally, that was just too much trouble having all those little dividers in there.

But you know, after a while, you know you get If you'll pick up this habit of reading your Bible on a regular basis and meditating on it.

I mean, it'll just, it'll get in there, it'll get in your heart.

You can say things like I'm the righteous as God in Christ.

I'm more than a conqueror, through him, who loved me.

I'm not gonna talk defeat.

I'm gonna talk the fact that I'm more than a conqueror.

I can do all things through Christ, who strengtheneth me.

I might be facing some kind of thing at work.

It might be so big, it might just be so challenging.

The boss has put this thing on me and I'm still scratching my head how I'm gonna come up.

I can do all things through Christ, who strengtheneth me.

I'm telling you, you've got the Holy Greater one lives in me.

The Greater one's gonna put me over in this situation.

He's gonna show me exactly how my Holy Ghost is an expert in all procedures and protocols.

He'll show me exactly what I need to do in my business to shine Instead of going.

I still know what I'm gonna do.

I bet they're gonna lay me off next time.

Oh, my God.

So you've got to change what we're saying.

Let's construct our world with the Word of God.

Thank you, lord.

You know the Word of God can speak more to you about who you are and what you have and what you can do.

Then all the counseling and all the somebody trying to you know, some kind of motivational speaker, everybody say my identification, it's right here.

See, this I think about when Jesus entered the ministry, when he was 30 years old, rabbi, and he came to his own hometown and the Bible says that he, that he opened up the book of Isaiah and found the place where it was written about himself.

See, he told them he found the place where it was written about himself.

Let's look at it.

Luke, chapter 4.

Luke 4 · chapter mention

If Jesus did it, we can do it.

You know, he didn't have a bunch of cards printed up.

He didn't have a multi-colored folder printed up describing who he was Verse 17, 16.

He came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and, as his custom was, he went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day and stood up for a read and there was delivered unto him the book of the prophet Isaiah.

And when he opened the book he found the place where it was written, and one one amplifies his written about himself.

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he's an honored be, to preach the gospel to the poor.

He sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, recovering aside to the blind, and set it liberty then that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord.

And he closed the book and gave it again to the minister and sat down.

And where did he sit?

He sat in the chair reserved for the Messiah.

And they all pull their hair out, they screaming and hollering.

He found the place where it was written about himself and Isaiah.

And so our identity is right here.

If you'll read your Bible, you'll get more and more of what your identity is all the time.

You'll identify the fact that you're a new creature.

You'll identify with the fact that you're the righteousness of God in Christ.

You'll identify the fact that you can do all things through Christ, who strengthened us.

Glory to God.

Just think about Abraham.

Abraham was Abraham.

He was Abraham and he's 99 years old, and he had a promise that he couldn't complete because he's passed the ability to have a child, and he's married to an old lady, that's 90, and she's been bearing all of her adult life.

So now she's passed.

And so what had to happen?

Well, god had to give him a new name so they could change what they were saying and give them a new identity, and said your name is no longer Abraham, it's Abraham, the father of many nations.

That's your identity, boy.

You hadn't been saying it.

You knew I wanted to make you the father of many, but you hadn't said it.

So now I'm gonna change your name and you're gonna have to say it every time you introduce yourself.

In 90 days they conceived Isaac.

Glory to God.

So I just got a testimony here about identity that I think will bless you.

In 1994 I was seeking the Lord about what I needed to change for my finances to turn around.

I had a yet another house it wouldn't sell.

It was the nicest house I'd ever built, biggest house I'd ever built, and nobody wanted to buy it and it was finished and interest on it was four thousand dollars a month.

That I didn't have and I had already called the bank and told them I can't pay the interest.

So you're gonna have to do whatever you're gonna have to do.

Do you think you're gonna fork?

No, we're gonna just let it accrue for a while.

I don't want to foreclose on it because banks, you know when they start foreclosing on property, well, then it attracts negative attention from the examiners and stuff.

And they, they.

It really has to be bleak for them.

And they, they just decided not to foreclose.

I said, well, I can't pay you anything on it.

I mean, I just I have no cash flow, it's finished.

You know, perhaps it'll sell this summer.

This was an early summer.

So I went off on a trip with Brother Osteen to Paris and and I said, brother Osteen, when I get home I'm gonna have to find out what's broke.

I said, I know the word of God works, but I must have missed God somehow.

I've got to find out.

I'm gonna inquire what it is that I've done because I've got a house that I can't sell.

I'm tired of this, my finances being, you know, it was a perennial problem for a number of years just barely getting along, and I should have been blessed.

I'm kind of tithing and giving that we had done so it seed with sown, obedience, so forth and so on.

So I just I never burdened him with my trouble, but that particular time it was kind of on me and I just mentioned it to him.

The next morning he got up and he said John, I got a word for you.

How would you like to have somebody like Brother Osteen stand at the foot of your bed and preach you your own customized message?

That's exactly what happened.

And he said I got this scripture here in Jeremiah.

See, I told Testament.

But that time that word from Brother Osteen was right to me.

He said Jeremiah 31, 16, and thus saith the Lord, refrain your voice from weeping and your eyes from tears, for your work shall be rewarded.

Saith the Lord, john, you've sown a lot of seed, don't you?

Don't you get down?

Now?

You know God's.

And it says here in verse 17, and there is hope in your end.

I'm telling you John, there's hope in your end.

And he encouraged me with this word out of Jeremiah.

So, and then, you know, a little while later, we went into the.

We were there for a minister's conference there in Paris, and he had a room full of ministers in there and he ministered out of Jeremiah 31.

He just used the same verse and preached out of that to them.

You know, a man, he had him shouting and had me shouting and encouraged me.

See, I was down, but he encouraged me.

And so I got home and I landed in Jeremiah and I just started meditating in Jeremiah and I started praying and I started approaching God.

I said, okay, god, I just need to know what adjustments I need to make.

I know I've missed you somewhere.

There's a key to this situation.

There's a key to why I'm where I'm at and I'm gonna find it.

I know you're gonna reveal it because you said ask and you shall receive, seek and you shall find, knock and it shall be opened.

So I know, I know you're gonna show me.

It took about two weeks early one morning, five o'clock in the morning, I opened my Bible and I was fixing to have to leave in about an hour.

I had to leave my house at six because I had to go.

I had contracted with another home building company to do some work for them.

They needed some help with their business.

He's a built on your lot builder and he built all over and I had no cash flow.

My company couldn't pay me, so his company was gonna pay my company, which in turn could pay me something.

So I wouldn't just be broke, but to work for him I had to leave my house and I'd go from there to Crosby, to Humboldt, to Mont Bellevue, to Baytown, to Alvin.

You start looking at the map and it's 300 miles by the time I got home most every day visiting his job sites, and so it's five and I've gotta leave no later and that's a little short for me because I need more time than that, than an hour, but I just didn't have it.

So five to six, about 530.

I'm just reading my Bible and the spirit of God spoke to my heart and he said son, you're a minister of the sanctuary.

And I went ooh, that's in Hebrews.

And I got excited and it's Hebrews eight two.

It's talking about Jesus, who was a minister of the sanctuary and of the true tabernacle which the Lord pitched, and not man.

It's talking about Jesus, the high priest.

Well, god used half of a verse to tell me who I was.

He gave me my identity, son.

You know, just to hear him say son was just enough I mean all by itself to hear God tell call you son.

Son, you're a minister of the holy things.

Sanctuary means holy thing, son, you're a minister of the holy things.

And just in an instant of time I knew where I'd missed it.

I knew it was time for Gladys and I to start this church.

My brother those things knew I was a pastor and he told me.

So His idea was well, john, phone's gonna ring one of these days, somebody's gonna be looking for a pastor and I'm gonna send you and Gladys right out.

You're ready to go?

I was his idea.

That's what he thought he was telling me about a friend of his that had he known, he would have sent Gladys and I.

But as it was, he didn't know until after the wreckage of the church.

He had chosen a young man who didn't do what he said he'd do and tore the church up.

He gave his church up to so he could go travel and more older gentlemen and was gonna go through and do missions, work and travel around you know and preach and like an apostolic type work.

But he couldn't do that because his home church got torn up by this young man that he gave it all to.

He church was split, split three ways.

He said, john, if he'd have just called me, you and Gladys could have stepped right into that, you could have taken that church, just no problem.

So he had confidence in me.

He knew I was called a pastor, but I knew that.

I knew that God was saying you know, you're not gonna wait for that, you're gonna start it, you're gonna start your church.

You're a minister of the holy things.

So I went over to the bed and woke up Gladys, and we knelt down at the side of our bed and we committed ourselves to starting this church, which turned out to be this church, and that was in the summer of 1994.

And here we are 30 years later.

It must have been God.

It must have worked, huh?

Because I had to know who I was.

I had to have an identity.

I had to have a revelation of how God saw me.

He didn't see me as a home builder doing just, you know, just a assistant pastor or a lay preacher or any of those kinds of things.

He saw me.

He saw me as a minister of the holy things.

So I tell you, praise God, you can build your world with words.

This church is a product of words.

Come on, lift your hands and receive today.

Glory to God.

Thank you, lord, we praise you.

I say I'm committed to get it into my world and bringing it into submission, I am going to frame it, fashion it, put it in divine order and I'm going to equip my world for its intended purpose by the word of God Amen, amen, praise God, you get anything out of this today.

Well, come on, let's shout a little bit.

Glory to God, amen.