The Joseph Church

Lift your Bibles up, wave them around, make Jesus glad.

The devil may.

We're gonna get into the Word just for a little bit.

Let's say this together say Heavenly Father, thank you for the Holy Ghost, thank you for the supply of the Spirit that's been dispensed here tonight.

I believe I receive what I need tonight out of that supply and from the Word of God.

Show me things out of the Word that will help me to navigate the pathway ahead, because we know that Jesus is coming soon.

In Jesus' name, amen, let's turn in our Bibles tonight to Psalm 105.

And we'll read verse 16.

And we'll read verse 16.

Everybody get out your knife and fork, because you're gonna have to cut this up and eat it like meat.

You can't drink this.

Everybody say meat.

See, we all need meat of the Word, don't we?

I've got a blender in case it's too much for you to chew.

Psalm 105.

, verse 16.

Moreover, he, that is God, called for a famine upon the land.

He break the whole staff of bread, in other words, he destroyed the supply of food through that famine.

He, that is God, sent a man before them, even Joseph, who was sold for a servant whose feet they hurt with fetters.

He was laid in iron.

And in my margin it says his soul, or his mind, his will, his intellect, his soul came into iron Until that condition in his thinking, his condition and his emotions lasted until the time that his Word came or was fulfilled.

The Word of the Lord tried him.

The King sent and loosed him, even the ruler of the people, and let him go free.

He, the King, made him Lord of his house and ruler of all his substance.

In my margin it says his possessions.

That's the King, wow, king of Egypt, lord of his possessions.

He gave him power verse 22, to bind his princes at his pleasure and teach his senators wisdom.

And he gave him power and teach his senators wisdom.

Israel also came into Egypt and Jacob sojourned in the land of Ham that is, egypt, and he increased his people greatly.

He made them stronger than his enemies.

And so tonight I wanted to share a message that I've shared a few times over the years.

I like to share it periodically because we have new people that understand this church and what it is all about, and we have others that just need to be reminded what kind of church we are.

The name of this message is called the Joseph church, the Joseph church.

Joseph is what we call an apostolic type.

In the Old Testament we have types and shadows.

In the New Testament we have the substance.

So if you wanna get fed as a Christian you need to stay mostly in the epistles.

You know that's really where it addresses your Christian life and your Christian living.

The Old Testament is not really.

It's for us but it's not to us.

It's types and shadows, just like up here.

I mean I've got a shadow, I'm casting a shadow because the lights.

I mean I can see my shadow but I can't tell much about it.

It's just a shadow, it's two dimensional and here we are three dimensional.

You have to get into another realm.

You have to get into another realm.

So the Old Testament will suggest things that we see in the New Testament and the apostolic type.

Joseph was an apostolic type, a sent one.

An apostle is one who is sent, a sent one.

And of course there's a difference between Old Testament apostles.

Really there weren't any.

There were only priests, prophets and kings.

In the Old Testament.

There was nothing really an apostle.

There was no such thing as an apostle in the Old Testament.

But Joseph was an apostolic type.

We'll get into that.

Why does that matter.

Well, you'll get it.

God sent Joseph ahead of Israel.

Israel was back in the Promised Land.

They were back, you know, and God, you know, was dealing with them because of idolatry.

Dealing with them because of you know where they.

Canaan land was not yet given to them, yet they lived in a.

They were foreigners, the Jewish people.

Jacob was a foreigner to them, and so God had to send him ahead to Egypt to escape the famine that was pronounced over Canaan land.

And so God sent Joseph over there ahead of time.

And guess what I mean?

I mean here.

He is a prisoner.

He's thrown in prison unjustly, he's falsely accused by Potiphar's wife.

You ought to read Genesis, the story of Joseph.

It's a powerful story, powerful testimony of how a young teenager, about 17 years old, had a dream, and that dream brought him into a position of testing and trying.

Notice, god didn't do it, the devil did it.

But the devil did the trying because of the call on Joseph's life.

Joseph was destined to be a great leader and, as I said, he's an apostolic type.

He's a type of Jesus.

He's a type of Jesus.

And so when God broke the food support, and then he goes, and by the time he's in, he's 30.

So he's in jail for at least 13 years.

And at the end in Genesis 45, verses five through seven, you know there's a miracle of reunion.

And Joseph's brothers, who actually sent him into prison, you know they were jealous of him because of his coat of many colors.

He was his daddy's favorite.

You know they had dysfunctional families, like we do, and they had dysfunctional families.

They had dysfunctional families.

Man, they had it.

You don't have favorite kids.

You just don't let that out.

I mean, you need to treat your kids all the same.

I know it's hard, but you can't have favorites.

If your kid figure out somebody's a favorite, they're gonna hate them.

You're not doing your favorite kid any favors by being him being your favorite.

Anyway.

So you know the brothers sold him into slavery and they acted like he was dead.

They told daddy, you know, oh, he's dead and lions ate him.

We all have got left as his coat of many colors got it and they put blood all over it.

See, I mean you talk about mean heartless golly.

And so Joseph had plenty of reasons to be bitter, but he wasn't.

And then later on he sent.

For you know his father said hey, I hear that things are going good in Egypt.

Let's find out if we can buy corn in Egypt.

And Joseph, of course, had the dream and he had the corn.

He had the market cornered on corn.

And so here comes his brothers and they have a reunion and that's a type and shadow of Jesus is gonna be reunited with Israel in the last days during the tribulation period.

Jesus is gonna be reunited with his Jewish brothers and they're gonna see the one whom they pierced and they're going to cry just like his brothers cried, joseph's brothers.

See, it's all a type and shadow of what's gonna happen.

So so, joseph, they were afraid when they realized this was the same Joseph they'd sold into slavery.

Now he is the second only to the Pharaoh in power in Egypt.

He's the prime minister.

He's over everything except the Pharaoh.

Everybody else snaps when he says jump.

They ask how high?

I mean they're all snapping to it.

And here they come and they and he has it all arranged that they have to come see him personally, you know.

And then he reveals.

He cries in private.

He's so emotional himself, joseph is.

And then he reveals himself and he makes a statement.

Genesis 45, five through seven.

Jesus Joseph told his brothers God sent me before you to preserve life and posterity and to save with a great deliverance.

See, so God gave him.

God gave him the reason why he was there.

He's not just a paper cup floating on the seas of life.

He has a destiny.

He is to fulfill an apostolic type.

He's to fulfill a type of Jesus.

And they you know what they did was wrong, but God used it.

Or y'all, are y'all following me now?

So Egypt became a place in which Israel could multiply.

They just had 70, that's all they had.

They had 70.

And by the time it was over, they had millions.

They had three plus million over many years, until a Pharaoh died who knew not Joseph.

And then they were afraid of them.

They were multiplying so fast and they said oh well, we've got to make slaves out of them.

They're gonna overrun our, we're gonna lose our country.

We gotta make them slaves.

And so that's how the slavery started happening, which was all prophesied by Abraham.

Abraham told him it was all gonna happen ahead of time, 400 years before it happened.

So Egypt became a place in which to multiply.

So Joseph then he procured, he gathered, he supported his family Genesis 39, 22,.

When he got thrown in prison, god gave him favor with the head of the prison, and the Bible says that whatever there was to do in the prison, joseph was the doer of it.

Joseph was the doer of it.

And so these words that I'm saying procure gather support, do?

These are apostolic words.

Again, there's no office of apostle in the Old Testament, but there was the type, the type of apostle.

I told you this is meat you're gonna have to chew it.

There's a purpose.

I'm going, I'm laying a foundation for you so you can make sense out of this church.

So apostolic words.

Then we can say it this way prophets say apostles do Prophets say apostles do.

Apostles are sent ones, they're sent ahead.

Jesus was the apostle and high priest of our profession.

Jesus was sent ahead and paid the price for all of us.

He was first on the scene.

He was the first begotten from the dead.

The Bible said he was the last Adam.

The Bible said Y'all getting it now.

So do doer, fulfill, accomplish, complete, finish, advance, forerunner, forerunner, scout.

You know the old wagon train.

I used to watch wagon train war bond on television back in the 50s and you know these wagon trains.

They would get together in places like St Louis and they would get together, families that wanted to go west, young men, and they wanted to leave the east or they wanted to leave the Midwest and St Louis was kind of the jumping off part.

That's where they would buy the Conestoga wagons and all that.

And then they'd hire scouts and the scout, you know, a lot of times were Indians or they were half breed Indians.

They knew how to track, they knew how to, they knew the customs of the Indian tribes through the country they're gonna go through.

And they had to have a scout because what they would do is they'd start their journey.

There'd be 10 or 12 wagons or maybe more, and they'd have their food on the hoof, you know, with them and they'd have their wagons loaded down with all their stuff and then the scout would go ahead.

He would ride ahead and he would check to see the river that they're gonna have to forward.

If you've got a river that's too deep, maybe you'd have to have to a few days to find a place to forward the river.

So he's a forerunner, he's a scout.

See, that's what apostles, apostles are sent ahead.

Joseph said God sent me ahead to preserve apostarity, to save with a great deliverance.

See, he knew his ad purpose.

He knew it wasn't a victim with a capital V.

He didn't send her out his jail cell getting you know, making up ways he's gonna get even with them.

He got revelation of why he was there.

Are y'all getting this now?

Fourerunner, pioneer, it means to advance, procure, supply, furnish, gather, prepare, distribute.

These are apostolic words.

Now this church God told me back in 1996, in the vision of the star in the sky, and I'm out looking for property.

My mind was we're outgrowing our lease building and my landlord had some property.

He had five acre tracks, 10 acre tracks, bigger acres, but I was interested in five acres.

I had five acre faith.

I believe we could buy five acres, had five acre faith.

So I'm looking at a five acre track and all of a sudden I see something in the sky and it looks like Marshall Dillon's badge, his Marshall's badge.

I'm relating everything back to the 50s when I grew up.

On television, marshall Dillon gun smoke.

He had a Marshall's badge, big old badge, circle, with a star in the middle of it.

It was up in the sky.

I was looking at the sky.

In the middle of it it was up in the sky and I'm thinking what is that?

And it just came and lit on the property and it was about as big as the center section, right here in the middle of five acres.

And I'm looking at that and I'm talking out loud.

There were people with me and I'm talking out loud and they don't know what in the world I'm doing.

They think I'm going a little bit wacky.

I said, well, what is that?

What does that mean?

And then all of a sudden, as I said, I didn't hear anything back.

I didn't hear what that was.

I didn't hear what that was.

And all of a sudden I zoomed out like I was on a rocket ship looking down until the star got so small.

It looked like a capital on a map.

I mean, that's the only thing I could.

It looked like a cap, like I was looking at a map in a capital like Austin or like Washington DC, some capital.

I said, lord, what are you saying to me?

You're gonna make us a capital?

What?

And he just spoke two words regional center, regional center, regional center.

So I had to pray that out.

I didn't understand it.

That ended by looking for property and then later in prayer, god reminded me that Lakewood Church was a regional center.

People came from everywhere to go to Lakewood.

Lakewood was not a local church.

Very few people that went there were from the neighborhood.

In fact, a lot of people in the neighborhood resented them, if you really wanna know the truth.

But you know, brother Osteen had such an anointing on him that he kept peace and there was never any controversy in the neighborhood, never any difficulties, even though they had a lot of parking that had to go on and they had.

You know, it's just a big old mess down the log jam of people coming in.

And then when they went to two services on Sunday, I mean you couldn't even hardly go down East Houston Road down there on that end of town, clogged up everything.

But he let me know, and so here we were, just less.

You know, this is 96, we're a year and a half old, and even at that date in this church's history we're one and a half years old very few people were from the neighborhood, they were from all over Houston and that has marked this church for 2019.

For 29 years we have people that come from all over the region, not just Houston.

I mean, people come from a pretty good distance.

And so I said, okay, I can understand the regional center?

Okay, I didn't, but I thought I did, in my limited vocabulary, certainly didn't.

I didn't equate it with anything apostolic.

As far as I'm concerned, I'm a pastor, I'm a local church.

That's what I signed up to do, that's what I went out to do and that's what I did.

And we started.

And so, regional center, okay, regional center.

And we've got people coming from the audit.

They're okay, all right, I see that.

But then, you know, as I kept praying, I kept thinking about a capital Governmental authority came to me as I prayed.

Where is your governmental authority?

It's in the capital.

And in America, you know, especially in Washington DC, you have limited government.

You have three co-supposedly, supposedly co-equal, branches of government executive, legislative and judicial branches of government.

That's the way the constitution was designed.

It's gotten perverted, it's gotten out of whack over the years.

It's not the way it should be, but ideally you have co-equal branches.

I didn't understand how could we be a governmental agency, we're a church but then God would give me assignments that were governmental in nature.

I mean, we started getting involved in politics, we started getting involved in speaking out on things.

I'll just say two words.

Monica Lewinsky and I had people leave over that one, because we had a famous preacher that had his hand of blessing on him, on Clinton, and said, well, we're gonna be in charge of him, he's gonna be accountable to us, we're gonna.

Oh, he's really repented and I knew he hadn't repented because if he had repented he would have resigned.

Well, you sound so sanctimonious.

Well, I'm not sanctimonious.

I just know that he sinned in the Oval Office and he violated a young woman and really he should have gone to jail, much less be the president of the country.

He's compromised himself morally and this is what we know.

What do we don't?

What do we know that we don't know?

I just you know, and I would not hold with those preachers that gave their blessing to that sin and didn't, and he never did meet with them again ever.

That was the famous prayer breakfast where he bodies live while they're playing how great thou art and have a kind of wet eye and you'd think, oh, he's really so sorry.

No, he wasn't sorry, he's an actor.

So when you say those things from the pulpit, I mean, you know, some people are too Democrat.

They're more Democrat than they are Christian.

Some people are more Republican than they are Christian.

You know, we're just Christian.

It happens to be that the Republicans have the best.

It's not perfect, but they've got the best platform and that's because we work on it all these years later.

All right.

So a regional center, an apostolic vine another preacher that I know came to the church and when we were in the seventh day at Venice church and he prophesied that we were an apostolic vine with a prophetic river, and that was his prophetic word over glorious way church, which was kind of a, you know, kind of a confirmation Everybody say Joseph church.

So I was in prayer one day after.

You know, and when God speaks to you and you go through what we went through, one of the things that we had to believe is when we lost the lease of our, when we leased the Baptist church down the street here it used to be champion force Baptist right down the street.

We leased it for 13 months and they sold it out from under us.

They used to send spies into our services on Sunday morning and because we'd have a service like we had tonight and sometimes we'd have, you know, boisterous services, sometimes people would run, sometimes people would roll holy rollers speaking in tongues.

In that old Baptist church still smell Baptist when we were there still smell like a Baptist.

I prophesied to the did anybody remember me?

Prophesied to the brick wall.

I say bricks, you ain't never seen what we're gonna bring in here.

But they weren't happy that we were in their church.

They didn't like it.

They liked the money, gave them lots of money and so they sold it out from under us.

We had to move.

We moved to the seventh day Adventist church.

That's 15 miles.

For those of you that don't know, 15 miles, that proved that we were a regional center, because we most local churches.

If you move them 15 miles, they're gonna go belly up Like the latest Mexican food restaurant.

Did you know they all?

They spring up and then they go broke.

Spring up, go broke.

Restaurants, you know, open and close all the time.

Churches open and close all the time.

We stayed open.

So God said see, you're a regional center.

I proved it.

I moved you down 15 miles from there.

So when we were in that church that preacher came said you're an apostolic vine with a prophetic flow.

That was confirmation what I already knew.

It wasn't news to me.

And sometime after that I was on my patio praying, talking about the Joseph church now giving a little teaching here in just a second.

Right now I'm rehearsing some things that God showed me and I was on my patio and I was walking up.

I like to walk and pray I don't really sit down that well I like to walk and pray, walk and pray, walk up and down, and I felt something over my shoulders and I heard something dragging the ground, you know, and I looked around and I saw a glimpse of something.

I felt a weight and I felt this something around my shoulders that was long and hit the ground and it was many colors.

When I knew it was a mantle and it was like Joseph's coat, a coat of many colors, but it wasn't a coat, it was a mantle.

Elijah and Elisha.

Elijah asked Elisha, what do you want me?

I'm leaving.

What do you want?

He said, father, that a double portion of your spirit be upon me.

He said you've asked a hard thing.

Nevertheless, if you see me, it will be so If you don't see me, it won't be.

And then the fireworks started.

The chariot of fire came down, picked up Elijah, took him to heaven and he kept his eyes on he said my father, my father, the chariots of Israel and the horsemen thereof.

He kept his eyes on his spiritual father, elijah, and Elijah threw his mantle over and he picked up the mantle of Elijah and slapped the waters.

He said where is the Lord, god of Elijah?

And the waters parted and he went over on dry ground.

A mantle is a symbol of a mandate and Elisha had a mandate to be the prophet in Elijah's place.

Elijah went to heaven, so Elijah had to stay Again.

That's a type in shadow.

Elijah's a type of Jesus that was taken to church taken to heaven, rather and Elisha is a type of the church that stays behind.

Yeah, are you getting this now?

So that vision of my mantle, a mantle of many covers.

It's a symbol of a mandate.

It's an authorization to act or to do.

See, do is what An apostolic word.

A lot of people do things, but they're not authorized.

So an authorization to act given to a representative.

So God is showing me some things about the apostolic 20 plus years ago, after he had told me to wake up the church in March of 99, just five weeks after brother Osteen, my father in faith, went to heaven.

That was a authorization.

There had to be a mantle that accompanied that, and I knew that it had to do with the whole idea of regional center and yet it's kind of a side issue.

In other words, not only are we supposed to be talking about politics and about this country and about this city and about this state, but we're supposed to be influencing the church at large, because the church had started kind of going downhill in those years, and he's given me authorization to do something about it.

A couple of weeks later I'm in the same area of my house and outside and I had a vision of this tower, I guess you'd call it, and I was standing there.

I was standing on my patio, but it was like I was standing on a tower and the platform of the tower was about the size of the center section and I was in the middle of it.

So I couldn't look down because it was way up and I think if I'd have looked down I'd have gotten vertigo because I'm not real comfortable with heights unless there's some kind of railing or something.

I was in San Antonio staying in the hotel and just the 24th floor and it just I made myself go out on the patio and I made myself go in and look down, and it's never comfortable for me to do that, but I make myself do it because I'm loud and devil, to make me afraid of heights.

Every now and then, if I'm riding in an elevator which is rare, I think it's because it's rare for me to ride in an elevator, but it's riding elevator up and down, up and down.

While we were in the hotel we were on the 24th floor.

It's no big deal, but you just get every now and then.

It started squeaking one time and I told the guy that was in there with me.

I said man, they need a Lou job in this elevator.

This thing, I'd like to get off this one.

I was laughing, but I mean I was comfortable getting off of it, you know, anyway, I'm standing in this platform and it's at a great height that I could see such a distance.

And what I heard from God was that your seat of authority was from the mantle that you've received.

When Brother Osteen went to heaven, I received not his mantle, I received a mantle.

I don't people say, oh, you got Brother Osteen's mantle.

I would never presume that.

I would never do that.

God would have to tell me that and I wouldn't say it publicly if he told me.

But I got my inheritance from him.

I got it, I experienced it and I experienced a genuine change in my ministry.

That was witnessed by several people that I have confidence in.

So I'm just all this is following along.

You know, after he's told me to wake up the church, five weeks after he left the earth, told me to wake up the church.

I didn't know the church was asleep.

He had to show me they're asleep in the area of politics, they're asleep in the area of his coming back.

They don't, they're not ready for his return.

Brother Oroberts, you know he was.

You know, verified that.

I heard it before.

He did so when he heard it, man, that's confirmation.

Say, I want to have confirmation.

I don't want to hear something.

I'm the only one that's hearing it.

Everybody I try to talk to about waking up the church, they just kind of glaze over and I'd leave and I'd say well, go back to sleep, wake up the church.

Another piece of information came as we were moving into this building.

God told me there's a dearth of the word.

I said how can there be a dearth of the word?

See, there's a dearth.

This is what moved Joseph out of Egypt, I mean out of Pekanin land, into Egypt.

He was sent ahead because of the dearth, the famine, the support of bread has been broken.

He said there's a dearth of the word.

I said, lord, how can there be a dearth of the word?

There's more churches now than ever before.

He said your children don't know what you know.

He started talking to me about a lost generation, and we're seeing it right now.

We're seeing a lost generation.

They don't even know if they're male or female.

They don't even know the definition of a woman.

They don't know.

They don't know anything.

They're dumbed down, all by design.

I'm convinced you read the communist manifesto.

This is exactly what they have done.

They've infiltrated every area of our nation In the government, in the letter agencies, in the elected officials, the non-elected officials.

The whole society is infiltrated With this dumbing down, this removal of all morality.

This is what they've done in Venezuela.

This is what they did in Cuba.

This is what they did in Russia.

This is what they did in East Europe.

Are y'all with me now?

So we've got to support the family by preserving a posterity.

That's why we teach those kids.

When God told me there's a dearth of the word, I said well, I'll tell you one place we're not gonna have a dearth of the word.

It's in our children's church.

They're gonna teach the word to our children and we began back there in 2004, having curriculum to teach and to make sure that our children are taught line upon line, precept upon precept, what their parents know.

They're gonna get filled with a holy ghost and speak in other tongues.

They're gonna be exposed to prophetic words and gifts of the spirit.

Are you with me now?

So, getting back to Joseph, his life prepared him for his ministry.

13 years in prison and his soul.

Bible says in Psalm 105, his soul came into iron.

He began to have trouble.

I know exactly how that feels, because I had some things way out ahead of time and I couldn't get anybody to listen and I'd look around here and people would leave and people would get up in the middle of my preaching and walk out the door and my soul came into iron.

The word of the Lord tried me.

What do you mean?

God tried?

The Bible says God won't try you.

He won't tempt you or try you.

Well, that's true, but the word will.

In other words, when he gives you an assignment, you're following that assignment.

Well, hold up a standard and God is watching to see if you're gonna quit.

Well, we ain't quit.

We didn't quit, whether people left or whether people came.

And I'm telling you right here, I'm here to tell you right now that we're coming into things, right now that God showed me 28 years ago.

It's taken that long for it to manifest.

You know, sometimes when God speaks you think it's gonna happen tomorrow, but here it's been 28 years.

Are y'all with me now?

Yeah, so Joseph submitted to the qualifying process.

You know there's called qualified and commissioned.

See, this is what's missing a lot in the church.

You've got people that have a call of God on their life but they don't hang around for the qualification process.

Every believer has a calling.

You might not be called behind a pulpit.

You might not be called, you know, to some public ministry.

But we live in the last days.

Jesus is coming soon.

I can really see the day when we're all gonna have to quit doing what we're doing and we're gonna have to go and we're gonna have to share truth with people all around the world.

Who's gonna do it?

We don't have time for a bunch of preachers to decide to do it.

They've got their ministry, they've got their employees, they've got their office buildings, they've got their.

They've got so much complication to take them 10 years to obey God.

You know what God showed me one time I was in Galveston.

I was watching a guy and here he was in the Gulf of Mexico.

This is the craziest thing.

I've never seen anybody do this, but he was on, he was kite surfing.

He was kite surfing.

Now I've seen him do that in Noeces Bay in Corpus, but not in the open Gulf.

I mean, I don't know, it was wild to see that guy.

He was kite surfing, which is a kite like a, you know, and he's catching the wind and his wires come down and he's on a surfboard and he is skipping through the water.

I mean he's going 25, 30 knots and he's going parallel with the seawall, right there outside the jetties, away from the breaking waves, but the waves are pretty.

I mean he's catching air and, man, he'd go up and he'd do a spin, he'd do a flip and come back down and then all of a sudden he would do 180 and come right back.

I mean he was like jutting, he was like cutting and darting.

He said that's what I want the church to do.

I don't want it to be like that tanker out there that takes 10 miles to turn a circle.

I want that.

I want my church to be able to turn on a dime.

Everybody say I'm the church.

He wants you to be able to turn on a dime.

He wants you to be so unencumbered, so blessed financially, that if he says, I want you to go to Serbia tomorrow, I've got some people I want you to preach to Well, I'm not a preacher, well, yes, you are.

You've got something that you've got your testimony to give.

You've got two hands you can lay them on people.

Are y'all with me now?

All right, I just want to take this time.

I mean, it's not a special anniversary or anything, but I just the anointing is here.

I just want to commend you for following along with me all of these years.

You know and you don't always understand what in the world's going on, why we do things the way we do.

It seems almost disjointed sometimes, I know, but we're going to a heavenly and Saint Asylum.

I mean, you know it's.

Let's look at Psalm 149.

I commend you on your.

You know what you've hooked up with us.

Verse four, 149,.

For the Lord taketh pleasure in his people.

He taketh pleasure in his people.

He will beautify the meek with salvation, but the one I want you to see the Lord taketh pleasure in his people.

My 35th year of ministry this year, 29, our 29th year, and he takes pleasure in us.

He commends you for what you've done.

Gladys and I were at Lakewood Church in 1990.

We had the World Convention.

People came from Bulgaria, people came from all over.

They had no place to go during the day.

They just kind of sat around under the trees.

They ate outside.

You talk about crazy looking.

I mean they just couldn't even handle all the people and the people from Bulgaria 200 of them came.

They took it as a formal invitation.

They took it to their communist Somehow they got a visa and they wouldn't go back.

They didn't want to go back.

The Berlin Wall hadn't fallen yet and it had, but it hadn't ended.

Bulgaria is still communist and they didn't have freedom yet.

They didn't want to go back.

A bunch of them stayed, like 200 of them stayed in the States.

But anyway they were everywhere.

We were working.

I mean we were gladys and we both had jobs to do.

I was there all day and they gave us a hotel room over on the east side so we wouldn't have to drive all the way to spring and back twice a day.

So one day I think it was a Wednesday we had little time off.

We'd been there since Sunday, monday, monday, tuesday, wednesday morning.

So Wednesday afternoon we had a little time off.

We wanted to go check on the kids.

We had somebody come stay with them.

They're older but they still needed somebody to stay with them at night and so we got.

We're on our way home dead tired, just man.

I couldn't wait to just take a nap.

We had a little time maybe before they got home from school we had to take a little nap and we stopped off at Papa's brothers right there at I-45, the Beltway north, and we were sitting in that little.

They had the little room up front, little narrow place where it was separated from the rest of the dining rooms, kind of private.

She and I at our table for four and we were sitting next to a wall.

I was this wall was here a glass window looking into the dining room.

You can see other people over here and I'm right next to the wall and here's save for four and there's two of us and we're sitting next to the wall and there's, you know, vacant chair here and here and then there's the waitress coming up and down taking our order and we were just, you know, ordering our food.

I said, boy, I wish Bob and Sylvia were here.

They just love to have some fried shrimp.

Sylvia used to love fried shrimps, her favorite thing.

She's a new, you know Laredo now.

I'm pretty sure she didn't have any fried shrimp, and Laredo on the mission field.

And Sylvia used to live next door to your dad, sylvia Sullivan the Sullivan's.

She's married to my brother who just went to heaven recently.

So, and Sylvia's doing great, by the way, just great.

Thank you for y'all praying for her.

She just so, so solid, no trace of grief.

But we were missing them and thinking, man, it would be great if they were here eating fried shrimp with us, you know, and we were just, you know, talking and chatting about the week that we'd been through and we've got till next, you know, till Friday we're gonna go back and you know we're spending the night at home, but then early Thursday morning and then we're gonna go back in the hotel and we're gonna be there till Friday or Saturday, I think.

So suddenly I felt someone had come up to my shoulder, on my left side, and to turn me like this.

Turn me, and I felt a hand on my front of my shoulder.

But it's the wall right here and I turned to look to see who it was.

And there's nobody there and suddenly it was Jesus.

I didn't see him, but I knew it was him.

My eyes just shot water out and I had a lump in my throat and I couldn't speak.

And it just his presence just all over me.

I could hardly sit there, glad, I said what's the matter?

I said it's Jesus, it's the Lord, lord, what's wrong?

See, I thought something was wrong.

I thought somebody in the restaurant was about to die and go to hell and he wanted me to pray for him or wanted us to do something about it.

I didn't know what it was.

I mean, you come from that angle and turn me into the wall.

And then you just, and I said what's wrong?

Is there somebody that needs prayer?

And he said I just came to commend you, you've been faithful, you've been faithful.

And of course then I bawled the waitress, thought you know, is he having a nervous breakdown?

What's wrong with him?

I mean, yeah, I just broke the Lord.

Lord, you would come and pop us, you'd come talk to me while I'm in a restaurant and just commend me for faithfulness.

Lord, I just it just broke me.

I just couldn't get over it.

So it says here that God has pleasure in our faithfulness.

Number one he takes pleasure, he gives him exquisite pleasure when you're faithful over what you have been called to do.

He commended me.

I didn't need it.

I didn't feel like I.

I didn't feel like I needed it.

I didn't feel like I needed an out of boy.

I didn't feel like I needed any recognition.

The fact that I got to do what I got to do at Lakewood church in front of thousands of people was just never ceased to amaze me.

I never, I never lost the wonder of how God arranged that.

God has pleasure in our faithfulness.

No giving up, no turning back.

We're still a word and spirit church.

We're not ashamed of the Holy Ghost.

We're not ashamed of speaking in tongues, cashing out devils and laying hands on the sick.

Never have been, never will be.

And I know God is commending you.

He takes pleasure in your faithfulness and I know that God takes pleasure in as your focus.

We're focused, we're honing in on the end time harvest.

It's the precious fruit of the earth.

James, chapter five, calls it precious fruit.

These people that are our enemies at the capital.

There are enemies in society.

It's because of the gospel sake they don't know any better.

God's gonna get a harvest out of that group.

We can't ever forget that he loves every one of them.

I had somebody on Facebook my Facebook page is just about to hit 17,000 followers and I just got a lot of really good people on there.

And then we've got a lot of people that don't have any idea what they're talking about.

I can tell they're saved, but they don't know anything.

They don't have any Bible truth at all.

Some of them just insist well, god's mad at us.

I said God's not mad at you.

He expects us to grow and to change.

He's not mad at the church.

I mean, why would God be mad at the church?

In fact, my Bible says that we've been reconciled under God and he's given unto us the ministry of reconciliation.

Second Corinthians, chapter five.

Why don't you read your Bible, dummy?

If God was mad at you, you'd die.

You'd be dead tomorrow.

You'd be dead right now If he'd ever gotten mad at you.

Mad, mad.

He's not mad.

He took all that at.

Jesus took all of that.

All you gotta do is do what he says to do and own what you do wrong.

That's all you gotta do is get it under the blood.

He got patience until he received the early and the latter rain.

We are his instrument of reaping.

If he got mad at the church, who's gonna reap the harvest?

The same people, you know.

You know he got mad at the apostles, but he didn't kill them.

He corrected them.

He's been mad at me, but he corrects me.

He doesn't get you know.

Do you get mad at your children?

Yeah, you get mad at them, but you correct them and you love them.

Tell them the truth and show them the right way to go.

Think, do you think God takes pleasure in our focus?

We're focusing on America.

I'd say that God's not through with America.

I say it's not too late for America to have a revival and I believe that God is gonna have another great revival.

Then he's coming back.

God has got his eyes on Israel.

We need to be friends with Israel.

They're hard to be friends with, I understand that.

But we're not friends with them because they're right on everything.

We're friends with them because they are the root that we've been grafted into the root.

If it wasn't for Israel, if it wasn't for Jewish people, we wouldn't even have a Bible.

Let's be grateful.

Let's pray for Israel, pray for the peace of Jerusalem.

That's why we're involved.

We're focused on truth because there's such deception.

We're gonna tell the truth, we're gonna speak the truth and love.

We're a voice, not an echo, and we're gonna continue.

We're gonna focus on that.

Is it easy?

No, it's not easy, because we're faithful.

See, god takes pleasure in the fact that we're faithful and that we're focused and, finally, he takes pleasure in our fearlessness.

You've got to have a little fearlessness to go to Austin and go into the Capitol, and I salute everybody that's gotten involved.

James has been a point of the spear for quite a long time and does a lot of more things than most of you know about, and it's not easy.

It's not easy to have people screaming at your face and calling you all kind of names and all of that kind of thing.

Well, you know what?

They hadn't hung him yet.

They'd like to See we have a voice.

We're not an echo.

We're there.

We're speaking the truth.

We're speaking the truth in the midst of all the lies that they're bringing.

We've let them know under no, no, there's no.

We love them enough to tell them the truth.

We're not going to join in with their, with their deception, where they've lied to themselves.

We're not going to participate.

Fearlessness, it translates to this church.

Last night I got away for a few days this past week just to get away from a schedule.

But honestly, I mean, do we need the rest?

Well, yeah, we needed the rest, but I'll be honest, I've just entered into such a rest anyway.

I don't need that, like I used to need it Five years ago, before my open heart surgery.

I needed the rest, but I, since then, I made some corrections, I did some delegating and now they've taken such a load off of Gladys and I that we just hang loose and travel life.

I get to do what I love to do and that's preach, like tonight.

I mean I'll go home, I'll float on.

Liz, I'm gonna borrow your shoe.

Who would know that was Lorraine?

Lorraine, I'm gonna borrow those shoes, those wings on there.

Gladys, drive, drive the cat, hallelujah.

So God takes pleasure in his people when they're faithful, they have a focus, they have fearlessness, they're not afraid of change, constructive change.

There's gonna be some changes ahead.

We've made a lot of changes, constructive changes.

I'm not afraid of it.

I'm so glad to have in the ministry with me my family and all of our staff members.

I just I can't say enough about them and how, sitting through the staff meeting, the amount of detail that every single thing that they do has examined and looked at.

And then we go sifting through every event, looking at the gaps, looking at things that we could have done, should have done better, and it's all detailed.

And then we have a whole another way of attacking.

At the next time we do something similar, a spirit of excellence, and I'm sitting there thinking I couldn't never do it.

I'd already be, I'd be in heaven three times over if I had to do it all.

And they're anointed to it.

We're so blessed we're going to need some more help.

When I delegated all that to James and Claire and Jay and Selena, their plates didn't get any bigger, they just got piled up higher.

I'm borrowing from coach back there.

That's what happened to him and Carol.

They're administrators and a teacher Carol's going to be an administration one of these days and what they did?

They don't have a bigger plate to hold everything, they just piled it up on top of it.

The plate gets piled up, piled up, and so now I can see that happening with my family.

Their plates are getting piled up, or mine.

I scooped some of that off of there and scooped that over there, and scooped this over here, scooped that over there, and now I am good shape.

But they, on the other hand, praise God.

So thank God for the anointing.

It's one that we saw come in, didn't understand all about it, and all these years later, god is just now bringing us into some of the purposes of the Joseph church.

We're anointed to do those things that apostles do.

I'm not calling myself an apostle, I'm talking about the church, and God has done it.

I think I alluded to it this morning.

God had to add to my equipment things that my father in the faith didn't have because of the time, the time we're living in the end days and in such a time as this, we've been brought into the kingdom.

Come on, lift your hands and receive tonight.

Father, thank you for this church, thank you for all the members that are here, so faithful to be here through all of the changes that we've had.

Our prayers that they will have a little bit more understanding of what kind of church they're part of.

Hallelujah, did this help you tonight?

Kind of rambled a little bit, but anyway, that's what happens when I start remembering all the things that God has done for us.