Walking In The New 1

Reach down and pick up your Bibles and let's wave them around.

Pick them up, lift them up high, wave them around.

Make Jesus glad, the devil mad.

Say this together.

Say Heavenly Father, I do exalt and magnify you.

I'm so grateful for all you've done for me and I know you're just getting started.

You want to make me an example to a lost and dying world of how good a God you are, how you've been misunderstood, how your ways have been twisted.

And, oh Lord, we thank you that the truth is prevailing and the love of God is being broadcast.

In Jesus' name, amen, you can be seated.

Let's go in our Bibles.

We've got several places to go.

So get your, you know your self ready for second Corinthians.

We'll start there.

There's a couple of verses.

We'll start verse five, second Corinthians, five, 17, a very familiar verse to most of us, but we'll read it.

And verse 17,.

Therefore, if any man or person be in Christ, everybody shout that's me.

See, when you get saved, you get put in Christ.

It's just automatic.

You don't try to do it, you know.

You know it just comes with the package.

You know.

I mean you put your shoes on, it's got a tongue.

The tongue comes with the shoes.

So in Christ comes with a salvation, if any man, if any person be in Christ, that person is, is, is a new creature.

Old things are passed away and behold, look at here now Is.

My dad used to say, look at here, now, all things.

The Griner translation, I knew you'd appreciate it.

All things are become new, all right.

And then just turn over to chapter four is right, you know.

Right next to it, verse 16.

He says for which cause we faint not, but though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day.

It is renewed the inward man.

So he calls the spirit, the inward man, the flesh or the body, the outward man perish.

Well, it doesn't mean you're going to die today, it just means that it's getting older, it's, you know, it's a mortal body, right, all right.

And then the last one is Romans, chapter six, and we like to share this verse when people are signed up for water baptism, because water baptism preaches a message of our death in Christ and our resurrection with him.

We buried with him, and so that's what this Roman six is for, verse six, or chapter six, verse four.

Therefore, we are buried with him by baptism.

Buried, well, how?

Buried in the water.

When you come up out of that water, it's a picture of being buried with Christ in the grave and raised from the dead.

Therefore, we are buried with him by baptism baptism into death, that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the father.

Even so, we also should walk, or continue in newness of life, and so that's what I want to share a message entitled walking in the new.

Walking in the new.

It's vital for believers to walk in the newness and the freshness of life.

That word new it means fresh, it means it means reconstituted, it means it has an idea of strange.

The idea of strange is associated with that word.

New, in other words new and strange.

Another word, another place in the Bible.

It calls where the peculiar people you know the world, can't understand us.

They don't know us because they don't know God, and so we are weird to them.

And they, and what?

And you know, it's just human nature to be afraid of anything they don't understand.

So they rail and scream and holler.

And, kate, I mean, that's where we're at now.

You can't even express your opinion anymore.

You've got to line up with their opinion.

They're so afraid.

Folks, the root of all of this is fear.

They make movies.

It's all about fear.

The movies are all about the world going, coming to an end.

The word the it's all about zombies.

It's about all these crazy things.

Ai I mean I've been watching movies about AI all the way back, you know, into the 80s.

The artificial intelligence for those of you, I mean it's a threat.

I mean these machines can get so smart, they can outsmart humans and start taking over.

You think it used to be just kind of a funny thing you could make a movie about, but now it's actually happening.

Well, you know, I'm not afraid of that.

You know because I read the Bible.

See, I know what the Bible says about the end days.

But they don't know, they're afraid, and so they're lashing out.

So it's vital for believers to walk in this newness and freshness of life.

The word life there in Roman six is the Greek word Zoë.

It's the God kind of life, or the life as God lives it.

That's what we've been given.

Jesus didn't come to make bad people good.

He came to make dead people live.

We were dead.

Now we're alive.

With what?

The God kind of life, the life that as God lives it.

That's what we have, and so you know we live in a world that's just.

We're surrounded and it's rushing to judgment.

Nations are in judgment, but Jesus said in the last days you'd see the waves and the wind roaring.

Well, what's he talking about?

People, nations, people, groups, they're roaring.

They're there and at odds.

Look at what's going on in Russia and Ukraine.

And all of that, people are divvying up who they.

All of a sudden, people are fleeing their alliances with America because we've had weakness.

Guys can't even stand up.

I hate that because you know we've had our challenges.

Glad is that a hard time standing up.

That's why she's been gone.

She's been fighting vertigo.

We've had some of you that fight.

You know when you get a certain age I won't say what age she's getting younger all the time, but you know you fight things she's overcoming.

We fight every day.

We fight against it.

We're not going to give in to it.

Whatever it is that you're fighting.

So we're surrounded by this world that's rushing to judgment.

Nations, people I mean the world itself is decaying.

They're trying to figure out how they can fix the world.

Hey, you can't fix it.

Stupid.

You didn't make it, you didn't create it, you can't destroy it, forget about that.

But it will be destroyed.

The whole earth is going to be destroyed and remade, but it won't be you doing it.

It won't be avoiding fossil fuel, it's not going to help, amen.

So if we walk in newness of life, just turn over.

If you're still in 2 Corinthians, just close by.

Look at chapter two, paul.

He had this revelation of the newness of life and how that we need to walk in it and he talks about it a lot.

To who?

The Corinthians, especially the Corinthian church.

He said you come behind and no good gift.

They had the gifts of the spirit, but they were not mature.

He said you know, you're just not very mature.

We could.

2 Corinthians, chapter two, verse 15, that's the wrong one.

He said second Corinthians, sorry, sorry.

Second Corinthians.

Second Corinthians, chapter two.

Did you find it?

I'm sorry, I gave you the wrong verse there, for we are, under God, a sweet saver of Christ and them that are saved and in them that perish.

What saver?

It means fragrance.

So save people, have a fragrance.

Where does it come from?

It comes from Zoë.

It comes from that continual renewing that happens.

We have a fragrance.

So to the one where the fragrance of death under death.

That's why, when you get around lost people, the devil and them hates the Jesus and you and hates the fragrance they're smelling.

Are you with me now?

Now he's reminding a carnal group of people that allowed themselves to get over into you know the carnality and the flesh.

They didn't know how to walk.

And he said you know, you're just babies.

You've got jealousy, you've got envy working, you've got cliques, you've got groups of people that you hang with factions in the church.

That's not right.

One of you said I've been baptized by a Paulist, I've been baptized of Paul, I've been baptized here or there and they've got this pride running through me.

He says aren't you?

You know you just walk in as mere men.

The amplified said Say we can walk as mere men, we can walk as the world walks, even though we're saved.

No, we're saved, but we're not walking that way, we're walking like mere men.

That's what happens with baby Christians.

That's why this message is more like meat than it is milk.

What is the difference between milk and meat?

Well, milk is for babies.

When you get first get saved, you need milk.

Of course you do.

Can't God just meet yet?

You have to wait.

You have to get a little maturity, then you can start slowly introducing the meat you know, and glad to see I don't know how many blenders we burned up making our own baby food.

Glad to make a round steak.

She'd cook it up and then she'd put a round steak Instead of chicken fried and put a gravy on it and put it in front of me.

She would put it in the blender and pretty soon I'd smell this smoking burning, you know, and it would just burn the blender up.

I mean just making our kids baby food Because they couldn't eat round steak, they couldn't eat chicken fried steak.

There's no telling how much money I've spent raising these kids.

I mean I've been raising them for a long time.

I've been raising these kids.

I mean I'm ready for payback.

I'm ready for payback.

You walk as mere men.

See the fragrance.

We can be the fragrance of life to those that are saved.

That's why we like to hang together, and we should.

But when we get around to other people we have to bring that fragrance out.

The fragrance must confront this world right now.

It's the only thing that'll work.

Everybody say the fragrance of life.

It's kind of like the new car smell.

I mean I just I bet that I'm a car guy.

I just love cars.

I've had lots of cars and I, like some people, don't like the new car smell.

I'll pray for you, but I like it.

I like the new car smell and you can't duplicate it.

You can't go down to the car.

Mr Griner, what fragrance would you like?

New car?

And then they put that fragrance in there.

It doesn't sound like a new car, it smells like something else.

I don't know what it smells like, but you think about that fragrance.

It's a combination of everything that the car is made of.

It's got all this plastic in it, the rubber in it, the carpet in it, the leather.

If you've got leather fabric, whatever it is, it's made of.

The volvos have some kind of synthetic, nothing made out of recycle, something recyclable.

It's recyclable.

Yeah, that's right.

Whatever.

Just give me leather, shut up, kill a cow and skin him and put it in my car.

Thank you very much.

It might take three or four cows, I don't know.

But that new car smell.

You can't duplicate it, but you know when it leaves, right, I mean, you know it leaves inversely proportional to how many times you go through the drive-through at McDonald's and Waterburton and it even accelerates in leaving when you eat in your car and the chicken nugget falls down in the cavern between the seat and the center console.

See, my first car did not have a center console, it had a bench seat.

But nowadays all cars have button windows and all cars have button windows and new cars all have button windows.

All of them have a center console and all kinds of places for things to get lost.

That stink and that new car smell evaporates.

And so my greatest example is my brother, bob.

He's in heaven now, but he bought in 1971, he's a car nut too he bought a 1971 Pontiac Grand Safari station wagon and we've got a picture of one just like it.

You run it up there.

There it is.

Y'all like that fake wood, that fake vinyl down the side.

It's 70 foot long and 16 tons is what it is.

And what do you get?

Another day over and a deeper and dead.

Anyway, it was huge.

It didn't fit in the garage.

It's 455 V8.

And one of the greatest things it had was it had a clamshell tailgate.

It had nine passengers, the rear seats faces out back and it had a clamshell tailgate.

What's that?

Well, the tailgate's sitting on the back of the car, you know, like this, and it goes underneath the floor, it recesses.

You know, like an overhead door goes in, like that this one goes underneath.

Oh, it was cool.

I mean you just turn a key in the left of the door, in the back, and it just recesses back and it's three little girls could climb up on the bumper, get in the back seat and they could face and make faces that everybody behind them, the red lights, and he was about to go on a vacation.

He wanted a big car to hold everything, hold them, hold some passengers they were taking.

So he goes and buys that.

And it was a massive car and but the new car smell evaporated pretty quick.

It just went away.

One day it started smelling something and it got worse and worse and he started looking.

What is it?

Did something die?

What happened?

Did somebody go on safari?

It's a grand safari.

Somebody throw a dead animal in the back and let it stay there.

But anyway, he couldn't find it, so he had to take it to the dealer.

It's all.

Yeah, mr Griner, we get this from Tasian Lee on this model, unintended consequences of a fancy tailgate, but anyway.

So they had to take the entire floorboard up in the back.

Just, you know, take it up all the carpet, all the seats had to come up and unveil the cavern where the door rests when it's open.

See, and they said, here it was, it's a bologna sandwich that fell down in there.

Here it is, Mr Griner, and so he traded that one in.

On a Ford Country Squire, same kind of idea.

It's got the vinyl down the side but the new car smell turned in.

Yeah, they couldn't get that smell out.

You know, we need to check and see if there's some kind of old, rotten bologna sandwich somewhere that has robbed us of what God said we could have.

God said that we could walk in a newness of life that has a fragrance of life, and the church has got to quit walking in the flesh and quit being so touchy and jealous and so hard to please and so easily offended and have all of the things that are going on.

Entitlement has rushed into the church, a sense of entitlement rather than a sense of duty, a sense of loyalty.

You gotta make your flesh obey you and you, or a spirit.

Are you with me now?

You know, smith Wigglesworth took a train to Ireland from England to go to a preacher's convention.

He was on a train full of preachers and he walked down the center aisle of his car and one of the preachers got up and said Wigglesworth, you do convict me of my sin.

And he fell out of the aisle on his knees, began to weep and repent and the whole car just broke out in repentance because of the fragrance that he put off, that confronted the sin that was in the church on preachers.

Oh, come on, lift your hands right now.

We've got such power, we've got such influence that we haven't used.

How you gonna have it if you don't know about it, if you don't believe with it?

See, it comes with it, comes with the package, but we haven't tapped into it, we haven't recognized this power that we have.

So it says here in 2 Corinthians 517 that old things are passed away.

And behold, look ahead now, pay attention.

All things are become new, new With the idea of strange.

Old things are passed away.

We're new creatures, literally.

The word creature means new species of being that never before existed.

So we tend to look at ourselves in the mirror instead of in the word.

We look at ourselves the way God looks at us.

Nobody's ever seen you.

You're a spirit.

You've never seen you.

That's the hidden man of the heart.

We see the outside, we see the body.

We don't know what the spirit looks like.

We don't, we're not aware.

So we have to, we have to pick up from the Bible.

What is our spirit?

What does it look like?

What?

What does God expect us to believe about it and say about it?

And so we're a new species of being that never before existed.

Old things, old man has passed away.

The guy that went to high school and went to college and got married and all of that, that guy died, john Griner.

I mean, most people know me.

You know in my past why I don't like to hang around high school reunion.

It's not wrong to go to a high school reunion, but you're going to be disappointed Because you're, you're one of a few.

Very few have what you have and you're going to hang around them and listen to all their clap trap, and and then they find out, you know I'm a pastor.

They sure don't want to talk to me.

You, they go.

What?

Then they try to remind me of all the shenanigans that I pulled.

Well, I got died.

I don't want to hear about it.

All things have become new, or become new.

That verb indicates continuous action.

See, we think, oh yeah, I became a new creature way back then.

No, you're becoming a new creation every second.

I'm a different person than when I walked up on the platform.

It's happening all the time.

It's happening continually.

There's a continuous action.

Titus calls it the regeneration, washing of regeneration and the renewing of the Holy Ghost.

Titus, chapter three.

So we're continually being made new, we're continually being washed.

We sang about it this morning, those blood songs.

I mean, I, I, I, I rewrote my history.

How did that happen?

Because my history doesn't exist in.

In all the things that I did back there, they don't.

They're gone.

God doesn't remember.

I'm sure not going to celebrate them.

I'm going to sit around and have pride.

You know it's pride month.

When are we going to celebrate with pride that we're born again?

There were new creatures in Christ Jesus.

You talk about something to celebrate.

We've got the celebrating.

What they're celebrating is disgusting, to say the least.

They don't know any better how they going to find out.

We got to tell them.

Some of them are going to hear, some of them are going to smell what we smell like and they're going to be confronted.

They're going to realize, without even a, without even a word spoken, we can walk into a room and bring people into conviction.

That's what's going on in the Capitol.

We started worshiping God.

We, you know, we sponsored that Capitol worship.

We got involved and I mean we started getting involved.

We had Capitol worship every during the regular session.

We had Capitol worship every Tuesday night Thank God for Steve Toath, a representative from Montgomery County.

But it changed the atmosphere.

How did it do that?

I was telling you, there was a fragrance that went in all over the Capitol and those people went in there and they're still screaming and still hollering and nothing happens.

They didn't get their way.

They can't believe it.

They go and they finally just leave.

The Satanists came one night and tried to have all their songs and everything, and and another worship team came back and started worshiping God and drove them.

They all left.

They couldn't make a connection with their demons.

We're hiding somewhere.

Are y'all with me now?

So the renewing of the Holy ghost.

And it says in Romans, chapter six walk.

You know, walk or continue Say.

Walk means to continue Doesn't mean just kind of hit it and then retreat, hit it and return Now.

Walk means continue in newness, freshness of life.

It has the idea of renovation.

We're renovated continually.

If there's anything that needs to be fixed, it just gets renovated, it's taken care of.

Can you imagine living in a house where your house is just renovated all the time and soon as something gets out of style, all of a sudden somebody shows up and puts you a new countertop in, puts you some new appliances?

You're washing dryer.

You know they're making funny little noises.

It's taken, you know, three and a half hours to dry your clothes.

You realize there's something wrong and all of a sudden somebody shows up with a brand new washer and dryer.

Just renovate your.

I mean just automatically.

That's what's happening with us.

Our spirit is being renovated, we're being upgraded and updated.

Oh, where did it go?

New strength, hallelujah, all right.

So walk in the new three.

Three, you know and you probably know where I'm headed with this and I'm going to tell you where we are going to be is that we're going to talk about spirit.

That's what we are.

We're spirit beings, we live in a body and we have a soul, a mind, a will and intellect, and so we need to have that renewing in all three areas.

And we talked a little bit about the spirit spiritually walking the new.

Everybody say I'm walking in the new, number one spiritually.

So Colossians 316 says let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another with Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord.

Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, abundantly.

Let it's you.

You let or no, don't, let See, it's up to you, you have to decide.

So the word has a huge impact on newness because the word of God will, will wash.

It wash you, the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy ghost.

Washing of water by the word, the word.

You've got to have the word, amen.

You have to have the word.

So you need to let it dwell in you richly, to the point where you're encouraging one another.

Admonishing means not only to warn but to encourage, to strengthen one another.

If we don't, if we don't hang together, we'll all hang separately.

So that's why a church is so important.

It's so important to have a pastor, it's important to have a church body that you're committed to, that you're accountable to.

You know, the more mature ones in this congregation will hold you accountable when they see you missing.

They'll.

When they won't say, well, I missed you in Sunday's God's what they used to tell Gladys, because Gladys was out on a date with me Say in, so they missed you in Sunday.

But it's not nosy, it's just they're concerned.

I mean, you can't go through something in this church without somebody being concerned.

And they're gonna call here, they're gonna talk to you, they're gonna pray with you, they're gonna encourage you.

That's what they're talking about.

Oh, there's strength in the body of Christ, amen.

And so the Bible says.

The other side of it is that, 1 Corinthians 14, 4, he that prayeth in an unknown tongue edifies himself.

What does that mean?

Well, edify means to build up strength in yourself.

Who's yourself?

It's your spirit.

You're a spirit being See.

Always.

Think about that.

Think that you're a spirit.

Relate to your.

When you look in the mirror, that's fine.

Look in the mirror, but you're not really looking at you, you're looking at your flesh.

You know, some of you might need to spend more time.

I try to spend more time looking in the mirror.

Praise God, because you know the things happen.

Hair starts growing in different places that I didn't know about.

By the time it's six inches long and silver.

Then I realize that.

Where did that come from?

So I have to spend a little more time than I used to.

No, but really, let's look at ourselves the way God looks in here.

We're spirit beings, so we edify ourselves by praying in other tongues, need to pray in tongues.

So there, if you're going to walk in the new spiritually, you've got to let the Word dwell in you.

You've got to stir yourself up in the Holy Spirit, pray in other tongues, jude 20, building up yourselves on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Ghost.

So you're continually made new.

You're refused to walk as a mere man.

1 Corinthians 3-3.

Your spirit will dominate your body.

Your spirit gets so proactive, your spirit gets so strong.

Remember, it's being renovated, it's being made new on a continuous basis.

Your spirit is a wonderful dynamo of energy and power.

But then there's other two parts of your body or your being that have to be dealt with, and of course the second one is your soul, your mentally.

You get to walk in the new mentally, and so the Bible says in Romans 12, to be not conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.

There's that word renewing again.

Now, what's being renewed?

Your spirit?

No, that's already taken care of.

That's what's going on.

The blood is doing that.

You know, we've been talking a lot about the blood, the power of the blood.

The power of the blood is that it's changing your spirit on a daily basis.

But a lot of people don't know that and they don't yield to that, and so their mind is in the way.

Their mind is still stuck on thinking like the world thinks.

Really, we could bore accurately translate that verse Be not conformed to this world's way of thinking, this world's way of thinking.

How does this world think?

It looks back, it celebrates the past.

It's negative, it's programmed negatively.

Everything is negative, negative, negative.

It thinks death, it glorifies death.

It celebrates death.

It's selfish.

It's selfish.

It's victimhood, victory.

Everybody's a victim, everybody feels mistreated, everybody's.

Oh, I'm just so.

You know these people, these trends that are so mistreated and they won't equal rights.

Well, guess what?

They haven't been.

You know, they've risen to the top of these major corporations.

Who do you think is the head of Target?

Who do you think is head of Anheuser-Busch.

These trans-gendered weirdos have not been.

They have not been discriminated against.

They've been celebrated and they're in charge of these corporations Major League Baseball, the Los Angeles Dodgers, the Toronto Blue Jays Pfft, pfft, pfft, pfft, pfft.

One of the players for the Toronto Blue Jays dared to speak out and then they drug him before everybody and he had to grovel at the feet of all these LGBTQ people.

Poor kid, I mean he should have come to church here.

You know, we could have put some sphysyrinctum in him.

He doesn't have a Holy Ghost.

He wouldn't know the Holy Ghost.

He walked up and tacked him on the shoulder he's a do-gooder and he didn't know what he was doing.

He went out there and said the right thing and then retracted it.

He did more damage.

He should have kept his big mouth shut.

No, we're been renewed and we are being.

Our minds are being renewed in the way of thinking.

How do we think the Word of God?

It gets back to the Word we can be.

What Transform?

Transform, that Greek word there in Romans 12, 2, transformed is the Greek word metamorphuo, from which we get metamorphosis, from which is what happens to the tadpole turning it into a frog.

I mean, a tadpole's a fish.

It's not a frog, it's a fish.

It's got gills, it lives in the water.

Only.

It's born in the water and lives in the water until metamorphosis happens.

A lot of a sudden it gets little legs, gets on there and the gills dry up.

And now it comes out of the water and hops down the road and now it's a little tiny frog.

Metamorphosis it completely changed from a fish to an amphibian, or the same thing with a caterpillar.

It's a hairy worm, no, skeleton, it's a skeleton.

And suddenly it goes up a tree and weaves a chrysalis and gets inside this hard shell place where it hides for a while and in there it's transformed or metamorphosized into what?

A butterfly?

And now it's got a hard shell, it's got an exoskeleton, Now it's got wings and it forces its way out of the chrysalis.

It tears its way out and sticks a little feller out there and one of the wings gets in there and it tears it open and then it hangs up there in the sunlight and it dries out and the next thing, you know, it just flies off.

Oh, it's amazing what God has designed.

That's the sense of this word.

You'll be transformed when you get the God way of thinking.

Everybody say I'm adopting God's way of thinking.

Well, his way of thinking is right here in the word of God.

So, and then finally, physically, oh, here it comes.

We're gonna talk about dieting and exercise.

No, I'm not really talking about that.

We could talk about that, but I'm not the best person to talk about that.

I resisted as long as I could, all right.

So let's look at Romans 811.

This is such a powerful scripture and you know we teach a lot on healing, we teach a lot on receiving your healing and all, and we believe in that.

But look at Romans 811.

And this comes at it from a little different standpoint, very similar to what happens to your mind.

You know you become transformed by the renewing of your mind.

And what happens to you spiritually, when you edify yourself, your spirit gets built up, it gets exercised Romans 811,.

But if the spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead will dwell in you and it does, doesn't it?

He that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his spirit that dwells in you.

So it's not a question necessarily of always getting healed, but we can appropriate this transformation that's available to our bodies by just allowing the spirit of God to do its job.

Our bodies can be quickened or made alive.

Just think about what happened in the grave.

I mean, jesus was dead in the grave, but more than that, he was dead in hell.

He was spiritually separated from his heavenly father and through just one.

The Bible says he was raised from the dead by the glory of the father.

Another one says the Holy Spirit.

See the same interchangeable.

I mean in an instant of time.

He was made alive in hell, peeled away from him all the demonic powers that had attacked him down there while he was paying for our sins, and he made a show of them openly, triumphing over them.

He defeated them, he put them under his feet.

He led a train of vanquished foes, colossians says, and paraded them as the victor.

Are y'all with me now?

Think about the transforming power of the spirit.

The same thing is available to your flesh, your fleshly body.

I mean, yes, we believe in healing, we all are access healing.

But you know what?

We've got something even better.

We can be continually quickened if we would talk right.

You know we've got to talk right.

We can't talk like the world.

We can't talk about death.

We can't talk about sickness and disease.

We can't talk about lack and poverty and just act like it's normal.

No, no, we've got to keep talking life.

Amen.

Are you with me now?

It's a consistent thing, from your spirit to your soul, to your body.

That consistency, All of that lines up together in agreement.

You know the Bible is filled with people that are seemingly ageless.

They just don't get old.

Look at Abraham and Sarah.

That's Old Testament.

We got a better covenant than they did.

They didn't have the Holy Ghost quickening them.

Well, yeah, but they had a miracle.

I know they had a miracle.

We can have a miracle every day.

We can have a miracle gradually.

We can just genuinely have our flesh just be renewed and renovated.

Are y'all with me now, man, it affects every part of your life.

You know.

I remember back when I got saved.

I had gotten back, evolved in the Catholic church and became a Lecter.

The Lecter is there at the Mass.

When they have a Mass, the Lecter is gonna either read a reading in the Old Testament or one in the New Testament.

So they had two Lecters for every Mass.

You marched in with the priest, you know, into the service.

You know you sat in a place up there, you know, and you went over to the microphone and I was a Lecter at both churches that I attended Prince of Peace and Christ the Good Shepherd.

And when I was a Prince of Peace I went out for the Lecter position.

I didn't have the guts to lead singing.

I was wanting to sing, I wanted to sing, I'd stand the guts to do it, so I settled for Lecter.

Now I wasn't saved yet, hadn't been saved, and so they had a speech pathologist come from University of Houston to listen to us, do our thing, read a reading and all of that and critique us.

And I thought to myself I'm not gonna be the first on this, I'm gonna listen to what they say to everybody and then I'm gonna incorporate all the advice when I get up.

And so that's what I did.

And he had no critique for me.

He just said oh, that's very good, thank you very much.

And so I was on the 18th so, but anyway, we had this guy from Buffalo, new York, that was head of the Lecters.

He was kind of my boss, little short guy.

He looked like he was maybe out of the mafia, you know, had this big old Italian nose and Italian looking and nice guy.

And I had just gotten saved and I hadn't left the Catholic church yet and I was due to be a Lecter this Sunday.

And so I showed up before the service and we're in the back getting ready to walk out, and George looked at me.

He's gonna be the other Lecter for the day, even though he's the head guy.

He's gonna be a Lecter and he's going the old.

I'm doing the New Testament.

And he looked at me John, you know, there's something about you.

You look different.

Have you lost weight?

And I said no, george, as a matter of fact, since the last time I saw you, I've been born again and filled with a holy ghost I speak in other tongues and he blinked and he said, oh, but it had so transformed my physical body and my countenance, what I received, that I looked different.

Jesus looked different.

Jesus didn't look like.

They didn't recognize Jesus.

See, that's the power available for us to be renewed and renovated and refreshed and quickened.

Come on, lift your hands right now.

Glory to God.

Everybody say I'm walking in the new, spiritually, mentally and physically.

Come on, let's rejoice today.

Glory to God, hallelujah, did you get anything out of this today?

Well, now that's meat.

Now that's meat.

See, meat has to be chewed.

Now you know what?

Why not just preach the milk?

What's milk?

Milk is the blessings.

I can preach on the blessings all day long.

We can all talk about the blessings, the blessings, the blessings, all the good things that God does and we believe all those Absolutely do.

But if that's your only diet, what is it?

It's milk.

And what happens to people that just drink milk?

Well, they get fat.

Fat babies is what the church has.

If they even have babies, a lot of them are not even saved.

So it takes meat.

See, that's why Paul was sprinkling his letters to the Corinthian church that was carnal with meat, so that they would grow and see that they were leaving things out that they needed to incorporate.

So you know, if I were you, I'd look at these verses and think about this message and see if there's some place where you can need to make an adjustment.

You know it's the little foxes that spoil the vine.

Little tiny adjustments we make have huge benefits.

So if I've said something that will, that makes you think about you know, I need to make an adjustment in that area Spirit, soul or body, whichever, whichever the three are all three.

Well, just start asking God to help you make those adjustments so that we can fine tune ourselves.

Listen, the church has got to grow up, the church has got to step into this power if we're going to see this mighty harvest, and I believe we are.

Amen, praise God, hallelujah, thank you, lord, got something for us.

Come on, let's get a microphone for Diane.

So the doctor says you need an operation.

Well, I have an operation for you, says the Lord.

I'm going to operate on your heart.

You're inner man.

I'm going to dig up within you my Holy Ghost.

You are my possession and I'm jealous of your constant longing for and relying on the world.

Now you will look to me because Holy Ghost is pouring and injecting his power in your life.

You've never experienced this before.

Stay alert and see the workings of my mighty hand.

Amen.

Praise God, amen.

Stay alert, let's stay awake.

Stay awake, amen.

That's our, one of our mandates in this church.

Wake up the church and we're on watch.

Now, what are we watching for?

Jesus is coming, amen, and he needs the church fully engaged.

Glory to God.

Well, we open the altar right now.

If you have a need, let me encourage you that this altar is a place where it's a point of contact.

You know when hands are laid on you, there's a point of contact you can say you know on on.