Let The Word Work 2

Let's lift our Bibles up, wave them around, make Jesus glad, the devil mad.

Let's say this together.

Let's say Heavenly Father, I do thank you for Jesus.

I thank you that you sent Him to us.

He's our Savior, he's our Lord, he's our healer and deliverer.

He's our soon coming King.

We give you praise for this Word of God and for the Holy Ghost that lives inside of us.

It's the Word and the Spirit together that put me over.

In Jesus' name you can be seated.

Amen, hallelujah.

And let's turn in our Bibles to Acts, the 27th chapter.

Let's continue what we started last week on Let the Word Work, and we'll start with verse 20, taught Paul on the stormy seas and that wasn't the Sea of Galilee, that was the Mediterranean pretty deep water, big waves.

And it says here in verse 20,.

And when neither sun nor stars in many days appeared and no small tempest lay on us, all hope that we should be saved was then taken away.

But after long abstinence, paul stood forth in the midst of them and said you're a serfs.

You should have harkened unto me and out of loose from creed I told you so and to have gained this harm and loss.

But be of good courage and I will exhort you to be of good cheer, for there shall be no loss of any man's life among you, but of the ship, for there stood by me this night the angel of God, as I am and whom I serve, saying fear not, paul, for thou must be brought before Caesar and lo, god hath given thee all them that sail with thee.

Wherefore serfs, be of good cheer second time.

Remember they don't have any hope.

All their hope has been taken away.

Man, it's bad.

Second time, be of good cheer, for I believe God that it will be, even as it was told me.

Glory to God.

Let's say that together.

I believe God that it will be, even as he told me.

Well, has he told you something?

Praise God.

We've got a whole Bible full of things that he's told us, and God is not a man that he should lie, nor the son of man that he should repent.

If he said it, he'll do it.

If he spoke it, he'll make it good.

Numbers 23.

So we have one thing to do, and that's let the word work.

Let it work.

So we talked about last week that faith works by saying or by praying.

Mark 11, 23 talks about saying Say to your man, whosoever shall say to the mountain.

Mark 11, 24 says pray when you believe.

What things, whoever you desire, when you pray, believe you receive him, you shall have them.

So receiving and having are two different things.

Receiving is a spiritual thing, receiving is a mark.

You mark it down the day that you pray, the day that you say that's the day you receive, and then it says you shall have.

Well, you gotta keep on saying that thing that you said.

You gotta keep on saying it.

You gotta keep on thanking God.

Before you see any evidence with the natural eye.

But sooner or later you're gonna see it with your natural eye.

It's gonna show up.

That's just how the kingdom operates.

Paul spoke it this way.

I like what he said.

See, he wasn't there when Jesus spoke Mark 11, 23 and 24.

He wasn't there, he wasn't one of the original 12.

But I like what one Bible scholar said, that Paul had a revelation and spoke and wrote the epistles, that which Jesus took to heaven unuttered.

You know, remember, jesus tried to teach the disciples a little bit about the Holy Ghost and John, chapter 14, 15 and 16, he talked to them about the comforter, the paraclete, and he told him.

John 14 · chapter mention

He said I have many things to say unto you, but you can't bear them now.

In other words, jesus had to go back to heaven because even after his resurrection, now he's dealing with baby Christians.

The 12 apostles, you know, are baby Christians.

I mean, they just got saved.

So there's only so much they can take in.

They can you know it's more than they can take.

That's why the epistles are written.

Oh, I'll tell you, man, if you really wanna grow, let's spend some time in the epistles, because every one of them is written to the church, the gospels.

Really, jesus says you gotta find out who Jesus is talking about.

I hear people quote Jesus and they try to apply what Jesus said in the gospels to us personally.

Remember what he said to the Pharisees.

He said you're of your father, the devil In the works of your father.

You shall do Well, he wasn't talking to us.

My father ain't the devil.

He used to be my father, but thank God I got a new family.

I got born again.

I was taken out of that family and planted in Christ.

So he wasn't talking to me.

So you've gotta find out who it is, that Jesus or whoever is in the Bible.

You gotta find out who it is.

Is the audience, who is the intended audience of what they're saying?

See, this whole Bible is for us, but it's not all to us.

And so I just, I wanna urge you, spend time in the epistles, because every one of them is written to the church.

You can appropriate every single thing oh, glory to God.

And while I count on the subject of faith I mean faith is just the reason I teach on faith all the time is because it's one of the ways that we have access to miracle power.

The whole world is warning miracle power.

They're seeking after it.

I mean all the movies they make.

They make these movies, these blockbuster movies.

You know transformers, you know this kind of movie, that kind of movie.

Most of them are disaster movies.

Most of them, you know, show you all this supernatural.

See, they're yearning for the supernatural.

There's something planted in the heart of every man, whether they're saved or lost, that wants the supernatural.

And the church has been derelict.

We have not shown them the supernatural by and large.

But that's changing.

I said it's changing.

So you know access to the miracle power you have access by faith in the Word of God.

That will give you access.

There's a couple of other ways that you can access miracle power.

Oh, another one is the anointing.

Everybody say the anointing, I mean you can show up at a meeting where the minister is anointed, the minister healing.

And I've been in meetings like that where healing was flowing, people got healed.

Gladice had fallen and broken her kneecap in two years ago coming out of a restaurant into the bright sunshine, dim light, and it was a big, tall curb and she just missed the curb and fell right in the asphalt pouring like broke.

Her kneecap happened to.

We had no insurance, we had no money, and so I took her to the emergency room, 400 bucks, and the doctor said, well, she's gonna have to have surgery.

She's gotta wire that together and then she can have to have another surgery.

Take the wire out, get that knee taken care of.

I said, well, how long?

I said we're believers, we believe in God's healing power.

How long do we have before it's too late to have the surgery?

He said, well, you're gonna really need to have it within two to four weeks, he said, after that, depending on how healthy she is.

After that, what happens is those bones start trying to grow together and they start sending out little feelers and then, if you go and try to put that together.

It's not gonna fit right.

You're gonna have a weak situation there.

You're gonna have something that can snap at any time.

You really need to get it within two to four weeks and of course that's a whole bunch of money.

We don't have no insurance, and so we gave God some space and Benny Hinn was coming to town.

Now we went to Lakewood Church Doty and Brother Osteen they're anointed but there was not an anointing.

And what about your faith?

Well, our faith was working, but we've got a time limit.

Faith works in time.

So really, that access to supernatural power is not the best way for her to get down the road.

She needs a miracle, but it needs to be faster.

Are y'all getting this?

I'm talking about the ways to have miracle power.

So we went to a Benny Hinn meeting.

He happened to be coming to Houston.

We sat down there, we got on the floor.

Man, I mean we had great seats and I mean he had a word of knowledge.

Somebody's leg I mean what even exact?

So one day, somebody's leg, and she had a cast on her leg.

I had all the X-rays that showed her kneecap broken and the doctors report with me and she had a cast on her leg.

God's healing legs right now.

And he'd do, he'd call out things.

And boy, I said, honey, that's you, stand up, let's take that thing off.

And she started walking up and down.

She hadn't been able to walk, see, because when that's broken you can't go like that.

You cannot do that.

Your leg will not support your weight.

You just go flat down.

I mean there's no way.

And so she started walking up and down, walking up and down.

He said if God's healed, you get over to the side.

We went over to the side and there was this lady who was a doctor.

It was volunteering there for Benny Hinn to check the people and she says what happened.

I said here's the X-ray, look at her.

She started walking up and down.

She said stand here, ma'am.

And then she took her leg and she yanked it up 90 degrees.

Does that hurt?

No, wrapped on her knee like that, does that hurt?

No, go to the front of the line, go up there.

Go up there to the stairs.

Your brother, brother Benny, get up on this platform.

Oh, glory to God.

I mean God, god's healing power.

I'm talking about God's healing power.

Now, the story didn't turn out too cool.

We got up there and there was another little girl about 13 and she had Coke bottled glasses.

You know what I mean by Coke bottled glasses.

I mean they're thick glasses and her and her mother were going crazy.

They were jumping up and down like a couple of fools.

I never saw anything like it.

They were absolutely beside themselves, totally out of control.

You know there's a good way to praise God, but don't be crazy.

Wait your turn to get up there.

We're standing on the steps to get up on the platform.

They're from Micah Steps, they're open.

They don't have any backing to them.

This has a back to it.

That was open in those steps.

We were standing halfway.

We're standing about three foot off the ground ready to get up on the platform and they bumped into both of us and we both slipped in between the stairs and she lost her healing, just like that.

That's kind of embarrassing in front of 15,000 people when you get up there and Benny says what happened and she can't walk and she can't.

You know, she, she lost her healing.

We pretty bummed out and I said, god, I don't understand.

I mean, she got her healing, so how can this happen?

He said well, you know, disorder is from the devil.

So that's why we have order in this church.

That's why we have ushers we have, we have gatekeep.

We call them gatekeepers.

We keep ordering this church.

You can run, but you can't go crazy.

You're not going to run over somebody running.

Are y'all with me now?

But I'm talking about the.

I feel some time that sometimes people get all these accesses to miracle power mixed up.

Faith is involved in all three of them, but faith is the one that I teach on because it's the one that's available to everybody, anytime, 24, seven.

And the anointing has to be when the anointing is present for the, for healing or for whatever power that you need, whatever kind of miracle power you need.

Everybody say faith anointing.

And the third one is glory.

The glory is coming.

They have the glory at Azusa street.

At Azusa street, the whole place every night For a couple of three years was filled with a glory cloud.

The children would play under the pews and play hide and seek.

They didn't have children church, I didn't have childcare.

The Holy Ghost took care of the kids and miracles happened every night.

All the walls were filled with with wooden legs and wooden arms and wheelchairs and and evidences of miracle power being manifested because of the glory of God.

Hallelujah, the glory is coming again.

The glory of God.

It didn't matter who prayed for you.

They had prayer teams down there, but it didn't matter.

In fact, daddy Seymour sat on the platform, sat in a chair with a sack over his head, because he didn't want anybody to know who he was or have their eyes on him as if he was anything.

He just sat up there.

He was in charge, but he didn't do it.

He didn't go down and pray for anybody.

All the praying was, most of the time it would just came on.

People.

The glory did it.

One time there's one story I read where a man came in with a wooden leg and he's and here's the glories in there and one of the one of the people you know.

There wasn't anybody official, just people would go back and forth.

What do you hear for, sir?

Well, I need a new leg.

My, I got this wooden leg.

Well, what are you doing?

Where's your faith?

How come you got that wooden leg?

Take that wooden leg off.

Kind of rebuked him, you know.

He took the wooden leg off and God grew his leg out all the way, all the way down through the ankles out through the toes, he had a brand new leg.

Now you, you go, figure that one out.

The glory, oh, it's coming again, I'm telling you right now.

But until it does, see, that's why I teach on faith, because faith will do the same thing that glory will do, may not do it instantly.

Faith will do the same thing that the anointing will do.

And besides that, the bonus of that is that you get to keep what you get, because you got it with your faith.

When you get stuff by the glory or you get stuff by the anointing of someone else's faith, well, now you know you're gonna have to do some catching up to defend that.

Are y'all with me now?

All right, so we've been talking about let the word work, and Paul spoke.

Instead of saying I believe I've received, he said I believe it will be even as it was told me.

And what happened in the storm?

It got worse.

It got a whole lot worse because the boat was grounded on a sandbar just off the coast of Malta and now it couldn't move.

And when the wind, the waves, tons and tons and tons of water beat down on top of that ship and there's no place for the ship to go.

It can't go down in the water, it can't roll with the punches, it's just between.

It's just like an anvil and you hit something.

You know you hit a horseshoe on an anvil with a big old hammer.

It's gonna bend and that ship broke up into a bunch of pieces and not one person was killed, not one sailor was lost.

276 people rode to the shore on broken pieces of the ship.

Talk about miracle power.

So, and we talked about the centurion, let the word work.

You know, he said Jesus, you don't have to come to my house to be healed, my servant, just speak the word.

Only You've got the authority.

I recognize authority because I'm a man under authority.

My authority works with my men under me and I know you're a man.

You couldn't do the thing.

See, he didn't say all that, but that's what he was implying.

And he had a revelation of the authority of the word.

You know, when the word, has the word been spoken?

See, it was spoken and then written down by holy men of God.

And now it's been written down so we can speak it and get the same results.

Oh, hallelujah, talking about access to miracle power.

And Jesus marveled at that faith.

He said I have not found so great a faith no, not in Israel.

So we talked about first John 5.4, and this is a victory that overcomeeth the world, even our faith.

So when you're walking by faith, you've got the victory.

You're not waiting for the victory, you had the victory.

You're not in the battle.

Well, I'm just under the battle.

Well, under the how are you doing?

Well, under the circumstances, what are you doing?

Under the circumstances?

You're on top of the circle.

You've got the victory.

If you've got faith, you've got the victory.

The minute you speak and believe, the victory is now.

That is faith and that is the victory.

And so you know, in the sense realm, you've got the victimhood, the whining, the crying.

So many churches teach their people about a bunch of victimhood.

You know, we're gonna, we're gonna, we've got.

We're the head chapter of the parents of murdered children.

I mean, what a terrible thing to have happen.

But why would you want a fellowship around that?

Why would you want to celebrate a murdered child?

Why would you want to wear that around your neck?

People don't know anything.

They don't know how to get free.

We've got, we've got the ingredients for freedom right here.

Praise God, hallelujah.

So last week we talked about the sense realm.

You know that's victimhood, whining and planning.

The faith realm is rest.

Hebrews, chapter three and chapter four.

If you have faith, you've got rest.

You're no more sweating, no more whining, no more crying, no more pacing, walking the fire.

I'm a walk in the floor all over.

You know no more that baloney.

I used to love country music and that was one that was in the mix all the time.

I don't walk the floor, praise God, except praise God.

I walk the floor praising God, not in careful suspense.

So, and we talked about the little kayak.

You know y'all never forget the kayak story 24 seven, it's working, 24 seven, it doing all the paddling.

See, when you trust in the word, when you speak the word and believe in your heart, then all the pressure then is on the word.

It's not on you, it's not on you.

You've got to sweatless, anointing, you're not sweating, you're not worried, you're not careful.

Oh no, you got the victory All right.

So let the word work over, number one, your health, number two, your dealings with people, and over your finances.

Hook your tongue up to your faith and let the word work All right.

So part two today everybody say faith, anointing and glory.

You need to keep that in mind, because I see people get it all mixed up all the time.

They just they throw healing or miracles in a sack and throw it out on the table and it's supposed to work.

No, you need to know everything has a different rule to go by, and your faith is the most important one, because you know that's how we're designed to operate.

We're designed to operate by faith.

The just shall live by their faith, and the longer you live, the more miracles you're gonna need.

If you gotta wait for some meeting to get a miracle, if you gotta wait for some guru or some preacher, you gotta wait for some kind of something like that, well, you might you might die waiting.

No, let's, let's get our faith built up.

All right.

Hebrews 11.

Now let's turn over there real quick and get part two in us.

I spent a little longer on part one, but you know what else have we got to do?

But go to church on Sunday and get a good report.

And we're gonna go to church on Sunday.

Hebrews 11, verse one.

Now, faith is a substance of things.

Hope 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.

Now put verse three, please, up on the screen and the amplified, and we'll read that one because I, like the amplified version, found it yet I can read it out of my notes.

But I'm just there you go.

By faith, we understand that the worlds, during their successful successive ages, were framed, that is, fashioned, put in order and equipped for their intended purpose by the Word of God, so that what we see was not made of things which are visible.

What we see are not made of things which are visible.

So let the Word put your world in order, your world.

Let the Word equip your world for its intended purpose.

Every one of you has an intended purpose.

Why did God slay you to be born in this time?

And I say that this is the end.

We're at the end of this age.

What age is that?

The church age.

The church age is the age where whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.

It's easy to get saved now.

It's not that hard to get out of the kingdom of darkness and come into the kingdom of light.

It's not that hard to get out of the devil's territory into God's territory, to be in a son of the devil and be a child of God.

What do you do?

You just have to believe.

You have to confess that Jesus is your Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead.

You shall be saved.

Romans 10, 9, and 10.

For with a heart man believeth under righteous, with a mouth confession is made unto salvation.

It's easy.

It just takes believing in your heart and speaking with your mouth.

Paul called it what?

The Word of Faith, the Word of Faith that Paul preached.

You know, the rest of the disciples did not have a revelation of the Word of Faith.

Paul received it.

See, jesus took it to heaven unuttered, and then it took Paul to come back down here after.

You know, paul said you know there's a man.

You know I don't know if it's in the body or out of the body, I can't tell you, but he saw things that's not even lawful to put down on paper.

I mean, you know he didn't put everything down that he saw.

You know, one of the things that he heard when he was in heaven is Jesus.

It says in red in my Bible.

It says Jesus said it's more blessed to give than it is to receive.

You can't find that anywhere in the gospels.

He never said it.

He never said it.

Where did he say it?

He said it to Paul when Paul went to heaven.

See, that's one example right there.

So this word of faith is so.

I give thanks every day for the word of faith and what I know about it, I'm still learning.

I'm still learning.

So let the word put your world in order, let it equip your world for its intended purpose.

I mean, you were chosen to live in the last of the last days.

You're chosen to witness what you're witnessing, what we're witnessing, the evil that we're witnessing, the horrible things that we're seeing played out.

I mean, did you see that horrible video that some pervert in the people's house in the Capitol?

See, we've got people going to prison for insurrection, but we have other people that are filming pornographic movies, homosexual pornographic movies, in a meeting room in the Capitol.

Why aren't they in prison?

I mean, that's the most.

I mean you couldn't even conceive of it.

You couldn't conceive of the stuff that's going on.

And that's just one example of what happened on October the 7th in Israel and the whole world is pressuring them to have a ceasefire.

Oh, you kill three of your own.

That's tragic.

The three people you knew, I knew it was coming.

There's no way to avoid it.

Don't blame the ID.

It's not their fault.

The fault is all on the Hamas and besides that, the Palestinians.

There's no innocent Palestinians because they are 80% in favor of Hamas.

They voted Hamas into power.

It's ridiculous.

So we have been chosen to live in these times and there is a grace available for us to not go crazy looking at all the horrible stuff and realize, hey, let's keep our eyes on the prize.

Jesus is coming, the glory is about to be.

Surely the earth shall be filled with the glory of the Lord as a waters cover the sea.

I believe that we have not seen it yet.

We're going to see it.

You and I are gonna see it.

We've been chosen for this time.

So let's get our world equipped for its intended purpose.

Amen.

How do we do it with the word Praise God.

So faith and words are not visible, but their final result is you can't see your faith, you can't.

The words are just like your speaker word you can't see it.

It's invisible, but let me tell you what results from your faith in your words is gonna become visible, it's gonna become reality.

If you don't like what you see in your world, we'll change what you're saying, change what you're believing.

Amen.

You've heard me say it.

I mean, you know, look, you can refashion, you can refit, you can remode, you can remodel, you can reshape, reorder, reequip your world.

I say re because you know we have a certain amount of that.

When we get saved, a certain order comes in.

Order comes into your life.

When you get saved, certain priorities change.

If you truly saved, your want tos change.

I used to.

You know, one of my major things that I liked to do was drink beer.

I made my own, and Gladys did not like the smell of the hops and malt in the kitchen when I was boiling it on the stove and getting a mix together and all of that.

This is before.

They had all these breweries all over town.

They've got these micro breweries, all these brewers.

There's one right down the street, right down Bougiois.

There's one down there that makes beer.

I used to make it in my house.

I made it all that I could drink and I drank a lot.

Well, that was one of my major things I really liked to do.

Well, you know, when I got saved, I quit doing that.

I didn't want to do that anymore.

I want tos change.

That's it.

So there's a certain amount of things that change when you get saved.

But it doesn't stop there.

You've got to continue with.

The more that you continue in the Word of God, the more you see in your world that needs to be redone.

I mean, have you ever redone your house?

You know we redid our house two or three different times.

We've lived there so long we've had to do it.

I mean, we've had to do it several times, you know.

So you know it's something you know when you kind of freshen it up, put a new coat of paint somewhere, put some new kitchen countertops on, or paint the kitchen or whatever you do, put new flooring down, you know it's kind of cool.

But then it just it's in this realm.

At some point in time it gets to where you don't even notice it anymore.

You quit looking at it and now it's time to do it again.

That's kind of the way it is in the Christian life.

You know you get to a place and you're just so in love with Jesus and all things are so much better than they used to be, and you keep going that way.

If you're not careful you can slip back instead of going up.

So God's Word in you is supernatural and His power is released when you speak it by faith.

You know Gladys was I've talked about her but she mowed the grass, especially the front yard.

She was the one in charge of the front yard, my houses when I was the home builder.

They were model homes.

In other words, people would look at our house as an example of what I built.

So we she had to keep the house spotless.

You know cause she never knew when I was gonna bring customers by there and walk through the house, as though the beds were all made, and you know you couldn't jump on the bed.

Kids, don't you dare do that.

Ring your ear off, take your shoes off before you come in the house, all that stuff.

But outside was her domain.

I mean outside she was always cutting the grass.

We kept Cornelius nurseries in business.

I mean, every time I came home from a hunting trip she had new bushes in the yard.

She said, well, you go hunting, I'm gonna go get some more bushes for the front yard and all I had to do was keep her in lawn mowers and you know a lawn mower, I mean, you know.

And so she had a.

You know she caught the grass.

She did not like grass clipping.

She would catch the grass and put it in bags and put it out at the curb and they'd haul the cut grass off.

She did not believe in leaving grass clippings on the grass, cause it turns yellow, ruins your yard, ruins your look of it, and so she would catch the grass.

And so the lawn mower had to be good enough to do that.

You know, it's kind of vacuums the grass up and puts it in a bag and all that.

So I bought her what I thought was a good lawn mower at Sears Craftsman lawn mower and she didn't like it.

And she used it a couple of months and I got home after she'd mowed the grass she said I'm taking that lawn mower back, I don't like it.

I said, honey, you've used it for two, I don't care, I'm taking it back, load it in the trunk.

It's because of Gladys that Sears went out of business, because she bought Jay a Batmobile one time there.

And you know, a little Batmobile, a little pedal car and of course he tore the microphone off and tore the radio area off.

It got all beat up and she took it back for credit.

I mean, after six months.

She took the whole Batmobile.

They wrote her check, gave her money back.

So she took that lawn.

I said what are you gonna do?

I just love to be there when the manager decided to give her money back.

I don't know what she told him, but she told him enough to where he didn't just give her a credit, gave her money back.

Well, she said.

Well, I said what do you want?

I want a snapper.

I said a snapper.

Come on, that's twice as much money 500 bucks.

I paid two, something for the grassman.

Now it's 500 for the snapper.

And from then on it was snapper.

Why?

Well, because it catches the grass, right, it vacuums the grass.

So I had to keep it running.

I mean, it's pretty simple.

All you need is gasoline and a spark.

If you've got gas and a spark, you should yank on that thing and it ought to start.

And if it doesn't start, then you can kind of look and make sure.

First of all, is it got gas in it?

That's pretty easy.

And the next thing is you have handy a spark plug wrench and you take the spark plug off and you look at the spark plug and it's usually dirty or fouled and something.

So I always learn to have fresh spark plugs in the garage that I could plug right in.

See, because I don't want to hold up progress, because I'm going to hear about it until it's running, so I would always get it running.

And so then the third thing that you had to have was the blade.

The blade was important, see, because if the blade is dull, if the blade is, you run over rocks, which happens and you knock a big old notch out of it.

Then it's not going to cut cleanly.

You're going to have grass sticking up.

You know where it shouldn't, and it's not going to vacuum the grass and put it in the bag.

It actually vacu it's like a giant vacuum cleaner and it vacuums, it pulls the grass straight up, cuts it and then puts the cutting in the bag.

That's all by the blade.

It's curved, it's real complex blade.

I mean the blade was 50 bucks.

Get a new blade is 50 bucks.

Had a I don't know how many blades I bought.

A lot of blades seem like.

So you know, you've got those three things and it when, if you had those three things, see, that's the way your faith is your, your, your faith is the fuel.

See, because, why?

Because it's your fuel is the God's, you know, it's God's power.

The spark is your faith.

I miss misspoke.

The fuel is the power of God, the spark is your faith.

Faith is a switch turns on the power of God.

So when your faith, you've got faith, the spark sparks and you've got power, the gasoline it's gonna, it's gonna start.

What's next of a blade?

Well, the blade is the word.

The blade is sharper than any two-edged sword.

The blade does all the work.

The blade does all the cutting, All you do.

I mean the, the lawnmower, self-propelled.

All she did was walk behind it, just walk behind it.

I mean it pulls itself through the yard, she just walks behind it.

You know what one you know.

And you know I never did it right, never did it right.

See, because I didn't, I didn't have a straight line, I didn't do the right pattern.

She was the only one that did the front front yard.

So let's, let's make sure that we've got fuel.

Say the power of God, you can, let's get full of the Holy Ghost, let's stay full and let's get our faith Working, and then we can cut with the word of God let the word work.

Let's turn over to Psalm 1.

Now I'm talking about Let the word work.

We're gonna read Psalm 1, one of my favorites.

Start with verse 1 Blessed is the man that walks not in the council of the ungodly, Nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scornful.

See, there's three things you don't want to be involved in.

Bless are you when you don't have that.

But His delight, that man, that man's delight is in the law or in the word of the Lord.

And in his law or word Does he meditate day and night.

And he, that man we're talking about, that blessed man.

He had some things he got rid of.

He got some things that he does do.

And now here's the results that he shall be.

You become something.

I Said you become something when you make adjustments, when you make adjustments to cut things off it need to be cut off, and when you make some adjustments to Institute things that should be instituted.

You're gonna have some good results.

You're gonna become something he is.

He shall be Lacketry planted by the rivers of water that bringeth forth his fruit in his season, his leaf also shall not wither, and whatsoever he doeth Shall prosper.

So let the word work.

Number one, verse one let the word work to reorder your surroundings.

I've been saying this for a lot lately because I see it a lot.

I see people bog down in Relationships and in fellowships with people and even organizations and even clubs and even I don't know neighbors, family, that that really they're bogged down.

They're bogged down.

You've got to, as life goes on, you've got to reorder your surroundings, people that you spend time with.

I'm not saying to divorce your family.

I'm not saying don't see them.

I'm saying are you spending?

Have you got any boundaries at all?

Do people just come and crash at your house and every time that they come to town they decide, they just decide they're gonna come stay with you and then you don't feel like you can come to church, you can't do what you normally do and you've got to entertain.

See, you're gonna have to change that.

Who's gonna change it?

But you, how can I do that?

Well, you start saying these words, you start confessing this every day Father, I thank you.

I am not spending time with people who have no godly purpose in my life.

They're not helping me.

They're not helping me.

I need to get my life equipped for its intended purpose and they can't help me.

They don't know what I know.

In fact, they draw from me.

I knew a guy one time that liked to be the most spiritual person in his group.

It made him his ego needed that.

He was an important guy anyway.

He was a CEO and he was a you know well-to-do guy and he wanted to be the go-to guy and he hung around people that were, yes, people that looked after him and wanted to hear what he had to say, but they didn't live right.

He wasn't changing them.

They were rubbing off on him.

And I look at him 20, 30 years later and he's on the scrap heap.

His kids are on the scrap heap.

See, he just didn't make enough changes to his surroundings.

I tell you, your surroundings can either make you or they can break you.

You need to be fellowshiping with people that have that love God, that have basically about what knowledge that you have.

That means people in this church, pretty much.

This is a great place to find people that you ought to hang out with.

That's why we have fellowships, so that you can find the right kind of people to hang around, because iron sharpens iron.

Plastic doesn't sharpen iron, Paper doesn't sharpen iron.

Amen.

Everybody say I'm reordering my surroundings.

See the ungodly, the sinners, the scorters.

Well, that's kind of what they're saying.

Well, see the spirit of it.

Quit being so religious about it.

It's not I'm not, you know, not to hang around people like that, but sometimes it's just people that are good but not good.

In other words, they're really not adding to you.

Well, pastor, that just sounds so.

That sounds prideful, what I'm not talking about pride.

You can be humble, you can be friendly, you can be nice.

When they have trouble, they can always pray with them and pray for them.

I'm talking about having your priorities.

I've had to live this for a long time and in my life, and glad it's not.

We can sit down and we think about people that we used to hang around with all the time at Lakewood and we never see them, ever.

I hadn't seen them since we started the church.

So that tells you that if I had hung on to them, I would be not be where I would be right now.

I wouldn't be where I'm at.

I'm hanging around people that can help me and you don't want to hang around yes people that'll just tell you what you want to hear.

No, you need to hang around people that love you enough, tell you the truth.

I've seen preachers like that.

They hire people that will only be yes people that will only tell them what they want to hear, and they cockadoodle do, walk around the office, you know.

Look, that's not what we have.

We have people that have safe harbor.

They can tell me what I need to hear.

Are y'all with me now?

All right, number two in verse two but his delight, see.

But his delight see.

What do you delight, see?

It's kind of an indication.

What you delight is who you're surrounding yourself with.

You kind of delight in that, no, delight what in the word?

And feed on the word like it's comfort food.

This time of the year, you know we get kind of fixated on comfort food.

I know we all have different ideas of what our comfort food is.

I've got my idea of comfort food, and comfort food I mean you can't eat it every day, I mean, you know, but when you do eat it, you make it worth your while.

Just, oh, it's just.

You know, I love bread pudding.

I would eat it every day, but I can't eat it every day.

I'd be back in the hospital.

Too much sugar, too much too many carbs.

Bread is carbs anyway, it's just sugar once removed.

So you, you eat all that Maybe, but comfort food I mean.

Don't you delight in comfort food this time of year?

I mean dressing and mashed potatoes.

Turkey we changed the menu for Christmas.

For the first time in history, I'm just making a big old pot of gumbo.

So it only took how long 50 years to change it.

But praise the Lord, we changed it this year.

Gumbo one of my comfort foods.

Gumbo, not squirrel gumbo, not turtle gumbo.

My grandmother was Cajun.

She put anything and everything in gumbo Gumbo.

The purpose of gumbo was to use up everything that was edible, but purpose of my gumbo is comfort.

So my gumbo is gonna have shrimp and lump crab in it.

It's gonna cost more than the turkey and the dressing to make it, but it's gonna be comfort.

Well, we need to attack the word that way.

We need to put everything else on the shelf, and we need to.

We need to feed on the word of God as if it's comfort food we delight in.

How do you do that with your words?

See that I do it with my words.

I just open my Bible every day, every morning, and I say, father, this word is a lamp under my feet, it's a light under my path.

Lord, I rejoice in this word as one that findeth great spoil and I just go on and on about it for a while before I ever read it.

I just talk about what it's gonna do in me.

Lord, I just thank you.

It's illuminating my spirit.

You're revealing yourself through this word.

I'm gonna know you better.

See, I just start talking like that.

See, when you talk like that, that's delight and your feelings will follow your faith.

Are you with me now?

It's not hard.

A lot of people they just you know, they don't know how to let their desires be changed by the Holy Ghost.

You know the Holy Ghost will change your desires to follow your faith and faith is coming out your mouth right.

So let the word be a delight, like comfort food.

Praise God, I'm gonna sit down here like a.

Of course, I know Jews didn't eat shrimp, but I'm not Jewish.

I mean, you know, praise God, I can eat shrimp.

I can eat crustaceans.

Well, that's unclean.

Well, it may be unclean to you, but my Bible.

Paul said that everything is clean.

Peter had to learn the hard way.

He had to have a vision about it.

Don't you call what God provides unclean All right.

And so finally, in verse three, now you become something.

He shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water and you go all through there.

That bringeth forth his fruit and his season.

His leaf also shall not wither.

Whatsoever he doeth shall prosper.

So let the word cause you to grow, to be fruitful and prosperous.

Let the word cause you to grow, be fruitful and prosperous.

It'll do it automatically.

It will do it as you spend time in it.

It will cause you to grow.

Every tree starts off as a seedling, little seedling.

That's what you begin life as a Christian, as a baby Christian, or you could say a seedling.

That seedling is not, can't do much.

The wind blows it over.

I mean it's kind of weak.

It starts off weak.

A baby's weak.

A baby needs a lot of nurturing.

A baby's got to be protected.

My mother I built her, my mom and dad back in the 70s.

I built him a house up in a little subdivision across from Lake Conroe called Lake Bonanza, had a nine-hole golf course.

Still does Nine-hole golf course.

My sister still lives there.

But he retired and I built him a little house, little one-story house up there so he could play golf, and they had about an acre of ground and she went out in this forest you know pine forest and everything.

She went out and she planted all kind of little seedlings, she put some little you know crepe burtles in and she put some little.

You know dogs found some dogwood trees, put that in and put little and they're this tall and my nephew went over to Mother Grass.

He mowed every one of them down, chopped them all down.

She was not a happy camper.

No, they have to be taken care of.

You know, one time we called them Praise the Lord trees.

We hired this guy and he did redid our front of our house landscape and he brought three trees big, tall trees that were in burlap, you know and dug big holes in the front yard, put three of those trees across the front of my house and we called them Praise the Lord trees because all the limbs went up like this.

I said, oh, praise the Lord.

Look at those Praise the Lord trees out there.

They're all praising the Lord in our front yard and they were pretty in the spring.

They just men.

They put on white flowers, just loaded with white flowers.

They were gorgeous and they were in there a couple of years.

And then we had a thunderstorm and I went out there and the middle no, the one on the left side, the one on the far left side as you stand out looking out my front door, the one on the far left side was broken half.

And so what do you do?

I've got two.

I've got two Praise the Lord trees, and then I've got another tree that's Praise the Lord this way.

So we took them all out.

I mean, it ruined the front yard.

I mean, why couldn't it have been the middle tree, but it just wasn't strong enough?

Why?

Because it's root system it was just.

You know, it was an inferior tree.

I mean, you know, get back to the guy that we bought it from.

He just bought something cheap and it didn't have the proper amount of roots for the kind of tree it was.

You know, when you look at a tree, it's got roots, and this last summer we had a really hot summer and there's a whole lot of trees that are dying.

Not as bad as 2011, but almost as bad.

Trees are dying everywhere.

I just went around the corner and there's pine trees dying everywhere.

When they get weak, the beetles get in there and kill them.

And so what's critical is your root system.

And you see, you get the word and you get it down on the inside, you meditate in it and now then you become like a tree.

You're planted by the rivers of water.

You've got a source.

You've got a source that causes growth.

With no water, you can't grow the tree.

In fact, the tree can't live without the water, and if you have a bad, compromised root system, then you can't get enough water and nutrients to the tree.

It'll eventually die.

It'll start to die, see, that's why how important the word is.

The word's more important than almost anything other than the Holy Ghost.

Are y'all getting this now?

So let the word do it.

See, let the word put all the pressure on the word.

Quit trying to do it yourself.

No, the word will do it automatically and you'll become fruitful.

And yeah, the fruit of the Spirit Love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness, the nine fruit of the Spirit, yeah, but I'm really not even talking about that fruit.

I'm talking about prayer fruit, I'm talking about health fruit, financial fruit.

Yeah, you're sitting in a financial miracle.

This church sits on ground that we didn't buy.

We didn't buy this.

We sowed, we sowed seed, and we kept sowing seed, and we kept sowing seed, and we kept sowing seed, and we kept sowing seed and we kept sowing seed.

And then one day a businessman called me and said John, I've got a tax problem.

I've got a proposal.

Give me the land you bought from me.

I said we've got a million dollars cash in that land, but you add it all up, all our payments plus our design fees and everything else, all of taxes that we paid.

We were mostly tax exempt, but we had some taxes we had to pay.

And I said we got a million dollars cash and this property had a $14 million evaluation on it, praise God.

Okay, well, we'll take it then.

And it propelled us in being able to borrow the money to build the buildings that we have today.

And then later on, we were able to sell the excess and get out of debt.

Praise God.

I mean, this is all provided.

Outside the church we didn't have people come in and say well, you know how much will you give?

Will you give us a hundred thousand?

Will you give us 10,000?

Will you give us $1,000 a month for the rest of your life, would you?

No, we didn't raise any money inside the church, it just came in from an unsaved business.

I believe he's gonna get saved.

I don't know that he's saved yet, but he's gonna get saved All right.

So fruit I'm talking about fruit.

Let the word make you fruitful.

Let the word make you impervious to contrary circumstances.

Your leaf shall not wither.

Your leaf shall not wither.

Everybody say my leaf's not wither.

See, the more you grow, the more when bad news comes, you don't come apart.

And so when you notice that you ought to thank God, you know God don't take credit for it, father, I just thank you because of your word.

I took this last thing a lot better than that.

You remember how it was a couple of years ago, maybe three or four years ago, when you heard certain news.

You'd just come apart and you'd weep and cry and have a pity party for a week or maybe longer, and this and that and the other.

And you know, suddenly you keep delighting yourself in the word of God and let your tree grow and let it be by the rivers of water, and you're continually feeding on it.

Then, all of a sudden, when those bad things they're gonna come.

You're gonna have bad news, you're gonna have things that are gonna happen, the report is not gonna be that great and you're just gonna go.

Ha, ha, glory to God, I got a better word than that.

That's not the final answer.

Hallelujah, I got the final answer right here.

And let the word make you prosperous, and that includes your finances, but it means everything.

Prosperity is more than just money, it's your life, and you'll become prosperous, successful.

You know, god marks prosperity as making progress.

That's what he's looking for.

God's looking for progress, and if you'll put the word first place and let the word work in your life, you'll make progress.

You'll please God and you will have the victory over and over again.

Come on, lift your hands and receive.

Praise God, hallelujah, glory to God, amen.

Did you get anything out of this?

Well, I know it's basic, but it's the basics that put you over Music.