Meditating On God's Word

But let's wave our Bibles around Livestream audience.

We're glad you could join us today.

Wave your Bibles around, make sure you've got your Bible, because you'll need it.

And let's say this together say, heavenly Father, I want more of you, and that automatically means more of your Word, more of your Spirit.

I can't know you apart from your Word because, father, you and your Word are one, and Jesus is the Word of God and he was made flesh.

So this morning I take in and partake of the broken body and blood of the Lord to know you better.

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

Hallelujah, wow, woo Glory to God, amen, amen.

I mean, it's just gonna be one of these atmospheres one of these days we'll just all be taken up, shoo Right through the roof and everything Won't even hurt the roof.

Think about that awhile.

All right, let's look at Joshua, chapter one, and also why you're turning.

Fine to Ephesians, chapter four.

And let me read verse eight, the book of Joshua.

And this is God talking to Joshua on the death of Moses.

And Joshua is now in charge of Israel.

You know, back prior to that, god instructed Moses to lay his hands on Joshua and impart some of his honor.

That's what God said, impart some of your honor.

And so the anointing that Joshua already had himself to do what he did be a right hand expanded and grew.

And now he's stepping in the shoes of the greatest prophet in the Bible.

And he said in verse eight this book of the law, god to Joshua, this book of the law shall not depart out of your mouth, but you shall meditate therein day and night, that you must observe to do all that is written therein, for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous and then thou shalt have good success.

All right.

And then we look over in Ephesians, chapter four in the New Testament, paul writing to the church at Ephesus, born again, spirit-filled believers, and he's encouraging them verse 14, that we henceforth be no more children tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine or teaching, but by the sleight of man and cunning craftiness whereby they lie and wait to deceive.

But speaking the truth in love, what truth?

The word of truth.

Speaking the truth in love, we grow up into him in all things, which is the head even Christ.

So today I just wanted to share a message entitled Meditating God's Word, and it's a companion message to what we shared with you last week the power of positive expectation.

And to take you back, last week the Holy Ghost had me called up after I preached that message and gave you the ways that are expectation.

They can be negative, they can be neutral, they can be presumptuous or out of whack or they can be right, according to the Word.

And then I said if you heard this message and you realized from my description of the wrong ways to expect things that you might need to make an adjustment, I've had to make endless adjustments to my expectations and sometimes we shoot low and sometimes we shoot way too high and so sometimes we have to make adjustments.

So I mean the whole place filled up up here and people I said now everybody could come up, but I don't want everybody to come up, I want just this message did something to you and this is a changing day, and so this filled up up here and of course, expectation is something that's in the mind.

You know our mind is important.

God gave us a brain and, as I mentioned last week, our brains are programmed in this world to think negatively.

They've found negative, they are negatively programmed.

That's why we have to be transformed by the renewing or the refreshing of our mind to the Word of God.

We have to think the thoughts of God.

And where are the thoughts of God?

These are the thoughts of God and we have to start thinking like God thinks.

And when you start thinking I mentioned this, I just touched it last week but when you start thinking like God's thinking, then you've got to hang on to that until it drops down in your spirit, because your mind can't really get anything from God.

It's only your spirit.

We have, you know, the Bible, the great law of faith, that if you confess with your mouth, you know and believe in your heart.

That's the law of faith.

If you're not saying it, you're not getting it.

Your faith ain't working unless your mouth is working.

And what should your mouth be working?

It ought to be speaking the same thing.

The word confess means to say the same thing.

It ought to be speaking God's Word.

And so you know, when God told Joshua, he said this book of the law shall not depart out of your mouth.

Meditation is not thinking.

You know, last night I was watching the preparatory of the debacle of A&M versus Arkansas.

They were three touchdown underdogs.

They wound up having the last play of the game.

They could have won the game at the last play of the game.

They played sloppy as usual, but you know, alabama played worse.

Really, if there was ever a night to beat Alabama, last night was the night.

But anyway, before that, this CBS, you know, and they're talking about the game and they have this young college kid and they're doing a special on him, an Alabama player, and it shows him in the background like this Now, I'm so fed up with this garbage, this transcendental meditation, this Eastern religion invading a Christian.

This is a Christian nation and all they can do is build up all this false stuff.

So the meditation I'm talking about is not that, it's not fixing your mind on nothingness or on some.

You know, the announcers asked the coach.

There was a guy in the middle who was a.

He was one of the announcers, but he's a coach, a former head coach.

He said have you found your chi yet?

And that guy I thought he was gonna hit him.

I really doubt he did not like that and you could tell he might.

He was a Christian, but he didn't know how to say you know, I love God, I don't need a chi, whatever that is, I don't know.

I've never heard the term.

I'm not practiced in the idea of transcendental meditation.

I just know it opens the door to devils, yoga devils, some forms of martial arts.

Gotta be careful, parents, what you let your children get into.

Gotta make sure that they're not in a place where they're teaching your child a bunch of devilish parts.

It's physical things are one thing, mental things and another thing.

All right so, but in the East, in the East and Bible East, meditation was a common way that people contacted God.

They're spiritually dead people.

They don't have the spirit of God living on the inside of them, but meditation was one way that they could contact God and God can contact them, especially the Word.

So what did he say?

This book of the law shall not depart out of your mouth.

So it involves speaking and thinking.

So the word meditation or meditate means to ponder, to utter, to hold close Amen, it means to confess, it means to brood, to turn about.

All of those things are involved in meditation.

So it is a mental thing, but your mouth has to be involved.

You need to learn how to talk to yourself.

Folks.

I've been talking to myself for 40 years.

Well, really, before I got saved, I was always talking to myself.

But I'm talking to myself, but glad it's coming.

Who are you talking to?

I'm talking to myself, nobody else will listen, but even now, man, I should've listened to you.

I'm talking to myself, I'm preaching myself a message.

I mean, you know, this is part of meditation.

And what?

Just?

Pie in the sky and know the word, the word of God.

This book of the law shall not depart out of your life.

Well, what's he talking about?

What was God talking about to Joshua, this book of the law?

Well, the only Bible they had was the first five books of the Bible, the Pentateuch, which Moses, in his spare time, wrote.

Moses wrote five books of the Bible Genesis, exodus, leviticus, deuteronomy, numbers, and just those five books of the Bible.

Joshua, if you will meditate in those first five books of the Bible Amen, you will make your way prosperous.

I like one version it's in the Amplifiers says you'll deal wisely and have good success.

You'll deal wisely and have good success.

Well, that was Old Testament.

We live in the New Testament.

We have a better covenant founded upon better promises.

But let me tell you something meditation is still a way for us to grow, because Ephesians four is really talking about medication when it's talking about speaking the truth in love.

It's not just talking about speaking the truth in love to your brother and sister, it's talking about yourself.

Many times we're hard on ourselves.

Many times we've been negatively programmed.

We beat ourselves up.

We go through this whole endless loop of thoughts in our mind that depreciate us, that tell us that we've what a could or should, a we fail short.

We did this, we did that.

God is visiting my sins upon me.

Well, you know better.

If you come to this church, we don't let you think that way.

But once you leave here, I can't help what you think.

You might think all kinds of crazy things people do.

They think all kinds of crazy things.

That's why I'm teaching this.

Let's think the way God thinks.

So in the New Testament we need to think about who we are in Christ, what we have in Christ, what Jesus is doing right now at the right hand of the Father.

There's so many things that we can meditate on that are beneficial, that will help us what grow, grow up and quit being babies, quit being so easily deceived.

I look out here and I see millions of people that are easily deceived.

They're still wearing their mask.

I wanna slap them.

Hey, even the CDC said if you're gonna do what the government tells you to do, every time they tell you to do it, they've already said you don't have to wear them.

And you're still wearing them.

What's wrong with you?

Well, they've been mass hypnosis is what's happened.

They're just like this oh, let's shine our lights, let's be an example.

But the way to get this Bible, this word, out of our brain tissue and down into our spirit is by speaking it over and over.

While we're thinking it, we speak it.

You do two things at once you renew your mind and now your own spirit is hearing your voice.

Speak the word and faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.

You're the biggest, most effective preacher you can listen to is you If you'll preach the word to yourself.

Preach just means proclaim.

You don't have to get spit like I do, be kind of gross, I mean.

You know you get to preaching sometimes, and most of the time teaching doesn't happen.

But when I get to preaching, every now and then it's so the first row gets baptized again and again.

So God had a vested interest in Joshua's success.

He called him, he equipped him, he promised to be with him.

If you'll read all the way up there, verse, verses one, all the way down to verse eight.

He said be strong in a very and good courage, told him that three times.

I mean, look, joshua was no, he's 80 years old.

It's been 40 years in the desert.

He's no spring chicken, he's the same age Moses was and Moses finally obeyed God.

Now he's 80.

He's 80.

Caleb is 80.

They're not beginners.

And yet they were nervous.

They were afraid, tempted to be afraid, to step into the shoes of the greatest prophet who brought five books of the New Testament.

And you know where Moses failed, joshua succeeded.

God is interested in your success.

And I never knew that, growing up as a little Catholic boy, president of the Knights of the altar, they all thought I should be going to the seminary, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

I mean all of my spiritual examples had taken the vow of poverty.

I mean, you know, sister Mary, ernestine, I mean you never saw her hair.

Her hair is tucked behind her little habit.

She's got a little white thing around her face.

All you see is her face like this, and from right here all the way down to the shoes, is a robe.

It's white, it's black.

You can't even see her.

I mean she just completely disappeared, except a big old bunch of rosary beads around her waist, All that stuff.

And I had Monsignor, not a priest, not a father.

He was a Monsignor.

So he's a notch ahead of a regular priest.

He's halfway between the parish priest and a bishop Monsignor.

He had a different vestments.

He had that scarlet headdress.

He drove a Cadillac, but it wasn't his Cadillac.

He lived in a nice house, but it wasn't his house.

They took vows of poverty.

So I thought God to be in.

Holy God, he didn't care about my money.

He didn't care about my business.

I never once prayed God help me in my business.

When I got saved I realized he cared about my business.

He wants me to be a success.

That's the gospel to the poor.

Thank God for the gospel to the poor.

Well, do you preach that prosperity?

I had somebody talk to me the other day.

All right, I see on your website you preach that prosperity gospel.

I said what gospel do you preach?

The poverty gospel?

That's the gospel Jesus preached.

Spirit of the Lord's upon me because he's an army to preach the gospel to the poor.

First one on the list.

Why don't you read Luke 418?

Doofus, see, this is every wind of doctrine.

Some of these are old, dusty, musty doctrines that come floating around.

There are people out there speaking against the word of faith, speaking against how I'm preaching here this morning.

And what's the antidote to that?

You need to meditate in the word of God so that you're so strong in that that nobody can talk you out of it.

Nobody can get in, and there are books of unbelief until you're different.

We got to grow up.

It's time to grow up.

If it was time for the Ephesians to grow up 2,000 years ago, how much more is it time for the church in the 21st century to grow up and quit asking permission everywhere, bowing and scraping to people that should be working for us and doing our bidding, and when they don't, we vote them out.

If we don't have anybody to run against them, then we run.

That's what it's going to take.

More of us are going to have to start getting involved, and we are.

I said we are.

So God had a vested interest and he told Joshua meditate, in my words, day and night.

So not just a little bit, not every now and then, but inconsistency lies the power.

I say that all the time.

It's not what you do one day and then you don't do it for another week, or what you do for a month.

You know and all that, it's what you do all the time.

It's what you have given yourself to do and you know, whatever you give yourself toward, that is what you desire.

I want to say that again.

How many of you desire this?

Didn't we just sing that song?

I want more, I want more.

Well then, how does that translate into action?

Well, it means meditate on the word day and night, and I didn't start out doing that, but I do that now.

I'm always speaking the word early in the morning, during the day, all at night, when I was late in ICU, I was speaking the word Isaiah 55.

Lord, the word in my mouth does exactly what it does in your mouth.

I sent the word to my heart.

It has to obey me.

I'm not moved by this crazy arrhythmia here, this atrial flutter.

They're saying I got atrial flutter and it feels like it.

I'm 180 beats a minute.

It's whipping along pretty good there.

It's like I'm running two marathons at once.

But you know I'm not moved by that.

I know it has to obey me.

Took a few hours but it finally did, and it still has.

I'm not ashamed to take medicine if it'll help me take control of something that I was born with, some sort of tendency that's in my flesh.

Why?

Because it takes time for faith to work.

It takes time, so I'm still speaking to that flesh all the time.

Every day, my heart beats with a sinus rhythm through open blood vessels, free of plaque obstructions and clots, and all the electrical pathways.

My heart, or normal, have been saying that for 15, 17 years and I'll probably see it the rest of my life till I get out of here.

One of these days I won't need that.

One of these days I'll have a brand new body.

Yes, whoo glory to God.

See, we have to speak the truth and love to ourselves.

We love our.

Don't you love yourself?

See, a lot of people don't love themselves.

It's pretty hard to love anybody else if you don't love yourself, if you're disgusted with yourself, if you're disappointed in yourself, if you feel that you're a failure, if you listen to the lies of the devil, that endless loop of thoughts going around in your brain, and you speak, those in between speak in the word, where you just delay the effect.

That's why you have to renew or refresh your mind to the word of God.

You've got to reprogram your mind and that's up to you.

I can't do it for you, god is not gonna do it for you.

You have to Romans 12 to be, ye, transformed by the renewing of your mind.

He can't pray, oh God, renew my mind.

No, you've got to do it.

He didn't say, joshua, just hang around, I am gonna make your way prosperous, I'm gonna go before you, it's gonna be just fine.

No, he said you meditate in the word day and night.

You do that and I'll do this.

I'll be with you.

I'll never leave you nor forsake you.

Woo, glory to God.

How can you be strong and very courageous, meditate in the word of God until it becomes so real, it comes down on the inside of you and faith drives all kind of fear out.

Perfect love casts out fear and sometimes we leave ourselves off of the love equation.

We've got to love ourselves at some point, because Jesus loves us.

We're not the same person we were.

We've been born again.

Old things have passed away.

Behold, all things have become new.

I don't relate to myself when I was a teenager anymore.

I mean, I remember them a teenage years, because that's when I met my wife, but other than that I don't like.

I don't even like going.

You know I'm not preaching against it necessarily, but for me personally, I don't care about reunions.

I don't like to think about what I did when I was that age, because I wasn't saved.

In fact, you know reunions anyway.

I mean, I don't live in the past, you know, I'm living in the future.

I'm living what's gonna happen, coming down the pike.

Glory to God.

So, joshua, if God wanted Joshua to be successful, he wants you to be successful.

He wants you to deal wisely in the affairs of life.

What do kids do?

Kids are just flitter things away.

They're not wise, they don't have experience.

When I think about a child, I think about myself.

At five years old I had a bike.

My parents bought, I think, christmas when I was four.

I got a bike and it was a little big for me, but I managed to ride it off of Tri-Sickel onto a bike and one day it was leaning up behind the garage.

I don't remember why the kickstand didn't work, but I had it leaning up against the back of the garage.

We lived on the corner in Galena Park, texas.

Little.

Most of you know where that is, on the east side, on the ship channel, because my dad worked in the ship channel during the war and so he bought a house there to be close to his job.

And then I was born and anyway, so I had this bicycle and I was out there tinkering around with it and this guy rode up, a teenager, old, 17, 18 year old guy on a bicycle.

He said hey, see, you got a nice bike there.

Would you like to sell it?

And I said sell it.

He said yeah, I'll give you $5 for it.

I work at Powell's Bicycle Shop and I knew we were Powell's Bicycle Shop.

It's just the next block over.

I knew right where it was.

He said my boss sent me out to get some bicycles and we're buying bicycles.

Would you sell it to me for $5?

And I said yeah, sure, give me that $5.

And he took the $5, he rode back and came back with a pickup truck in a few minutes and loaded it up and took it off, you know, and I was so happy I meant I had a $5 bill, man.

A little bit later I saw my dad.

I said dad, look what I got.

What's that?

Where'd you get $5?

I said I sold my bike.

Well, he didn't waste time getting mad at me.

He got in the car right then and drove down to Powell's and five minutes later he came back with my bicycle in the trunk.

He had snatched that $5 out of my hand too and gave them the money back and I think he chewed on that.

You know, the owner just sent the guy out, didn't give him any instructions.

You know he just and so, but then there became a.

You know I deserved a spanking, but my dad didn't spank me.

He just, you know, told me how silly that was.

Don't you understand?

You sell your bike for $5?

We gotta go replace it for a lot more money than that.

What are you gonna do?

Not have a bike, don't you need a bike?

Well, yeah, see, I didn't think.

See, children don't look ahead.

Children don't see the results of their behavior.

They don't understand what's going down there.

That's why they need guidance and they can't pick out what sex they are when they're five.

You idiots, glory to God.

We need to grow up and we need to provide leadership to this great nation and it's still a great nation and this is a great city in need of leadership.

Better leadership, I should say.

Day and night means anything great takes time.

You're not gonna get anything overnight.

It takes time.

Faith is a seed.

You have to plant it.

The whole kingdom.

Mark 426 says Jesus said Our kingdom is like a man planting a seed into the ground and he sleeps and rises night and day and the seed should spring up.

He knew it's not how first the blade, then the ear, then the full corn and the ear, and when the seed is ripe, immediately he put it in the sickle, for the harvest has come.

That's how the whole kingdom operates.

So if we're gonna change, like last week, some of you came up here and it was a big deal.

It was a big deal.

This was a time when you made some adjustments to your thinking.

Now you're gonna have to make the adjustments to your speaking and you're gonna have to think and speak differently than what you've been speaking and thinking, because that's the key to growth and that's the key to success.

That's what God said.

I didn't say it, I read it to you.

God said success comes from meditating day and night upon His Word.

Come on, lift your hands right now.

Glory to God.

I believe somebody's getting the connection here.

You know you did that when you were in school, you had to study for tests.

You had to study.

You had the writing term papers.

You know you had a science project.

Gladys did all the science projects in our house but anyway, other than that, she went to some camp, some women's meeting.

It was gonna be at a camp and she was driving down this muddy road, driving down this muddy road and she was dressed to the ninths of women's meetings.

So she was dressed to the ninths.

She had her pumps on, she had her high heels.

She had, I mean, she was dressed to the ninths.

Boy, I mean, she's driving down this muddy road and over there in the field is a butterfly that Jay needed for his science project and she waited out there in ankle deep mud and got that butterfly ruined.

Her shoes Went barefooted the rest of the day and the next day, just for Jay, just for Jay.

But most of the time you would have to.

You know you'd have to do all that work.

You know you remember how it was.

You know you'd have to give yourself to it.

I mean, if you've got a term paper you had, you just whipped that thing out the last second, but you had to work on it and you know, if you ever, if you went as far as college.

I just had some things that I'll tell you what you did a lot of study.

It's different than high school.

How many remember how violently different college was from high school?

I mean, they just spoon feed you in high school, but in college you're on your own.

They don't care whether you pass or flunk.

In fact, they kind of like it when you flunk, because it makes room for other people.

They just flunk all the ones that are dumb and collect your money for your freshman year when you probably didn't even belong there to begin with.

Amen, they have to spend time, you have to prioritize, you have to have consistency.

That's part of being a disciple, a disciplined one.

It's part of you changing and prioritizing your time so that you say well, you know, I'm gonna make time for this, I'm gonna make time for prayer and meditation.

Really it's all rolled up into one.

Really it's all one thing.

Reading my Bible, praying and meditating the Word is all kind of one action.

And once you kind of get the hang of it, it's a little mechanical.

At first it's a little bit awkward.

At first I had a severe allergy to elastic.

My waist had broken out with welts and just man it was.

I was miserable, so I had to stay away from elastic.

Then I got saved and one day, at Lakewood you know, had an altar call and he said why don't you go up there?

You need healing.

I said no, I don't, I don't need healing, I'm fine.

So you've got an allergy to elastic.

I said, well, I don't have any problem.

Yes, because you don't wear any elastic.

And so God I mean he made me believe for my healing.

So I believe for my healing.

Proverbs four the word is medicine.

The word is medicine to all your flesh.

And I started taking the word as medicine four times a day and I wrote down all the healing scriptures.

I had about a half a dozen.

We've got a healing scripture card right out there in the lobby you can pick up.

We've done all the easy work for you.

All you got to do is look it up and read them.

But I had about a half a dozen.

I had to write them out and I would say all six of them.

In the morning, at noon I had a little supper time and before I went to bed.

Four times a day and I did it every day.

I made myself do it.

I couldn't see any difference.

I mean, I had elastic and extra my skin.

I broke out in big old, nasty looking welts and leaking and bloody and itch all the time.

I'm sitting at Lakewood and I'd run a pencil down my belt line and itch my waist.

It's embarrassing, I just couldn't stay with, just tormenting Hard to sleep.

You ever have eczema?

You ever have any kind of something like that?

That just itches and just torments.

That's the way it was.

And it took about six months of doing that, six months.

And what I was really doing was I was meditating on the healing scriptures.

They got down in my spirit and then all of a sudden, boom.

One morning I realized I hadn't had a bit of itching.

And I looked at my waist.

It looked bad, you know still, but it didn't itch.

And the next day it looked like baby skin all the way around my waist.

Not one bit of itching, not one bit of trouble.

Ever since then it's been 40, some odd years ago.

I'm telling you, the word of God got out of my brain down into my heart, down into my spirit, where my faith can operate with it.

Are y'all getting this now?

Oh, the importance of meditating the word.

So you've got to prioritize, you got to be consistent.

Those of you and everybody really not just the people that came up here, but everybody needs to pay more attention to your meditating the word of God so that you can grow.

We can all grow.

The fact is, if you're not growing, you're shrinking.

There is no treading water with God, there is no status quo, there is no place where you can just kind of tread water, you know, keep your head up, but no, you're either sinking or you're swimming.

Well, I don't, it doesn't feel well.

See, you're not gonna know that until it's too late.

When you're underwater it's too late.

So we have to be growing.

We need to be growing.

Anything healthy is growing.

Meditate, let me.

Let's turn over to 1 Timothy real quick.

I wanna give you another example here in the New Testament, 1 Timothy 4, 14, paul talking to his son.

In the faith, timothy, neglect not the gift that is in thee, which was given thee by prophecy, with the laying on of hands of the Presbytery.

Now, timothy was a pastor, but he was really more than a pastor.

He was an apostle.

He had churches under him.

He was young, though, and he had to overcome his youth.

People look down on him cause he was so young.

But earlier you find out that he came from a heritage of faith his grandmother, his mother and now him.

He's got a heritage, a spiritual heritage, and so Paul is telling him.

He said don't neglect the gift that was given you by prophecy and the laying on of hands of the Presbytery.

Meditate upon these things, give yourself wholly to them.

That thy profiting there's that word again may appear to all.

God wants you to shine for him.

He wants your profiting to be an example to others.

He wants it to be so obvious.

Well, I'm just humble.

I don't want anybody.

You know what.

I understand where you're coming from, but there's just too much of that already.

We need to shine for Jesus.

We ought to be our blessing, we ought to be an example of God's blessing on the earth.

All this hiding behind, you know, god didn't say hide in a corner.

He said get your light on a candlestick, put it on the side of a hill and let it shine.

You don't take credit for it.

You give God all the glory for the things that he's done for you.

Well, I don't want to talk about my healing, because so many people are sick and they'll feel bad.

Come on, you got your 180 degrees out of phase Wrong thinking.

Now, when God heals, you talk about it.

Tell people they need to know Whoo glory to God.

Meditate on all the verses that say in Christ, in whom, through whom?

And also meditate on the rama words that you receive when we do a prophecy up here, especially when I prophesied, because when I prophesied it's not the believer's ministry.

I'm not trying to build myself up at the expense of anybody, but I am saying I know office, I stand in when I prophesy.

It's worthy of your meditating.

You ought to get a copy of that prophecy and you ought to meditate on it.

Whether I ever give you a personal word or not, sometimes I do, sometimes I don't.

It's rare that I give people personal words.

Glad it's got a personal word from Brother Osteen one time.

I'm telling you what it changed the course of our lives.

It encouraged her, strengthened her.

She was at a real weak point and after that night, when he was prophesying, all she could see was Jesus talking to her.

That's the power of the ministry that's in this church.

I'm gonna wrap it up with just one testimony here.

In July of 1994, my business was in trouble.

I had the biggest house I'd ever built 5,000 square feet, $650,000 three story house and right next to West GU.

It was in the subdivision right adjoining West University I could just say West GU.

I don't know where.

That is Oversized lot, prettiest house I'd ever built.

But nobody wanted it, nobody bought it.

It was just sitting there, $4,000 a month and the interest going out the door and finally I couldn't pay it anymore.

To all the bankers I said look, can't pay the interest.

I paid you all I can pay you.

I can't pay you anymore.

They had me on monthly interest and I'd paid the interest up to this point and then I couldn't pay them anymore.

And I said well, we decided to just let it ride till it sells.

We'll collect all of it in the rears.

And well, I appreciate it, but it's up to you.

I mean I, you know I'm, it's being shown.

But other houses of soul, well, I didn't know.

But I had built that house in presumption.

I didn't.

It wasn't God's will for me to build that house.

In fact I was really late.

I should have started the church two years before.

But my I got the fear of man.

My partner just insisted oh, we gotta, we can't quit now.

We've gotta build yet another house.

I said it could cost you everything if it's in God.

See, I knew it wasn't God.

I said if it's not God, what am I doing, starting something if I don't know?

I made a few mistakes.

This was a kind of I don't know.

This was a costly one.

So this house is hanging around my neck.

It had dirt around all the outside entry.

You know the doorway going into the house, because everybody that I saw when I'd have them, I'd known it with oil and believe with me that it sold, and it sold about a year and a half after we started the house, after the bank owned it.

The bank did foreclose on it, but anyway, this was before that.

This is the summer before that.

So this is heavy on me, brother.

Those things asked me to go with him to Paris for a minister's conference, and so I prayed and I said yes, and so we're in Paris, we're getting over jet lag and we were sailing on the Sain River, went to the Sain River, went on a tour as a bright, sunshine day it's in June, late June, early July.

At night it's in the 40s there.

It was just beautiful and we wanted to get over jet lag, get out in the sun and kind of get flipped over.

You know where you can kind of function.

And I just I always made a point not to trouble him with my personal issues.

I just tried to be a help to him but I just found myself in such I don't know misery.

I guess you'd call it that.

I told him.

I said you know, fellow stain, I hate to say this, but I'm just sick and tired of lack.

And I said I've got a house stuck.

Now again.

This has happened over several different times.

This here it is again, and when I get back to Houston I'm gonna have to find out what's going on.

I know God's word works, but it isn't working for me right now and I've got to find out what's happening to me.

And he just kind of looked at me and he didn't say anything.

And so the next morning it's 4.30, he gets up.

I fix ourself, fix us coffee for two.

I'm laying in the bed in our hotel room sipping on coffee and he's standing in front of my bed.

He said John, I've got a scripture for you.

God gave me this verse for you Jeremiah.

Jeremiah 31, 16, and he got his Bible out.

How would you like to have brother Osteen and preach a personal message to you Five o'clock in the morning in Paris?

You kind of wonder how these kind of things happen.

Here I am.

I've got a personal word from my pastor, jeremiah.

You know, I know the thoughts I had that last week.

I know the thoughts that I think towards you, thoughts of shalom and not of evil, to give you hope and expect it in.

Remember that one last week.

Well, this one, jeremiah 31, 16.

He said thus saith the Lord, refrain thy voice from weeping and mine eyes from tears, for thy work shall be rewarded, saith the Lord.

Oh, I heard that and it just hit me.

Thy work shall be rewarded, saith the Lord, they shall come again from the hand of the enemy.

Well, that's not part of the verse.

He selected certain things out of these two verses Thy work shall be rewarded and there is hope in thine end or thy future.

There is hope in your future.

Well, you know he gave me that word and of course we rejoiced.

I received it, thank you.

And when I got home I started right there in order to find out where I was and what I'd missed.

Where had I gone wrong.

What had I done?

I started right there with my pastor's prophetic word out of Jeremiah 31, 16, 17.

And I started meditating on that.

And then I started reading in Jeremiah and then I you know, one thing led to another and I just won't go into the whole thing.

But a month later, on the 811, 94, a month later, this was on.

This word came on 7 in July.

I didn't write the.

I think it was July 2nd.

So on 811, five weeks later, early in the morning, five o'clock in the morning, I was fixed to leave the house in spring and drive to Umbil, then to Crosby and then to Alvin and then to West University Place.

I mean 300 miles.

I'm fixing to take off for a 300 mile round trip because I'm working for another builder.

He hired my company.

My company couldn't pay me anymore, it was broke.

So my company charged him for my time and I just worked for him helping him out as a superintendent for his construction projects and they were all over.

He's a build-on-your-lot builder.

So but before I left you know it was early in the morning I was praying a little while, but I didn't have a lot of time to pray, I had to get on the road.

I said, well, I'll pray all the way while I'm traveling.

You know which I did?

And all of a sudden, the Holy Ghost everybody say the Holy Ghost.

Now, it wasn't my spirit, it was the Holy Ghost spoke to me, I mean a very loud, authoritative voice, and he said to me this has only happened a handful of times in my life that the Holy Ghost spoke to me.

He said, son, you're a minister of the sanctuary.

And I mean it hit me like a ton of bricks and I knew it was in Hebrews.

I found it in Hebrews 8-2, talking about Jesus, who was a minister of the sanctuary and of the true tabernacle which the Lord pitched to, not man.

So the Holy Ghost used half of a verse.

He told me who I was.

I had to know who I was.

Meditating on these verses led to a visitation from God.

He told me who I was.

Son, you are a minister of the Holy sanctuary means holy things.

And I woke Gladys up in the dark.

I said, honey, holy Ghost just spoke to me.

He told me that I was a minister of the sanctuary.

It's time for us to let the unholy things go and start ministering about the holy things.

It's time for us to start this church.

I knew I was called to be a pastor.

I was waiting for someone to call me, but I realized that God was waiting on me to obey him.

And so we both knelt down by the side of the bed and committed ourselves.

And this church is the result of that, because the next month I got my, you know, I went to brother Osteen and five, five months later we got our release and now we're here.

But it started because we meditated upon that verse and that prophecy that went for we were able to do battle in the midst of trouble.

What about that house?

You left me hanging.

Well, the bank took the house back, they exercised their rights and they foreclosed on that house.

I lost a lot of money and my partner lost almost all of his money.

There was damage done.

So on January, the 3rd of 1995, they took the house.

But on January 29th 1995, we had our first service and we've never looked back.

We've never lacked for a thing.

I mean, they could have come back to on me and filed an efficiency judgment.

They could have sued me for the difference between what they collected and what I owed them.

They didn't, and you know we just walked away and God just started blessing and blessing.

You know, when you get in the will of God, god's blessing, your profiting, will appear to all.

Come on, lift your hands and receive.

Lift your hands and receive today.

Praise God.

Did this bless you?

Glory to God.

Meditating on the Word, did you get something out of it today?

Now, don't lift your hand unless you mean it.

But I have to ask you now are you going to amend your schedule so that you're going to start meditating on His Word on a more consistent basis?

Amen.

A bunch of you have raised your hand and several of you thought better of doing it just.

Yet you like the idea and you're going to begin next month.

Do it now.

Do it now.

Come on, let's lift our hands.

Father, we thank you for your Word.

Lord, we thank you that we're growing up.

We're no longer children tossed to and fro, but, lord, we're just meditating in the Word, growing and our profiting is appearing to all.

Amen.