Remember Who You Are

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

Say this together.

Say, heavenly Father, thank you for our worship team.

Lead us into your presence today, remind us of how good you are, your Word.

We feast on the Word of God.

We're led and filled with the Holy Ghost, and today we will delve into the truths that are contained in this Bible and we will appropriate by faith everything that belongs to us in Jesus' name, amen.

Praise God, you can be seated, glad to have.

Our children from grades two through five are in the service today and they're gonna be taking communion, parents, so you can kind of be involved in there.

Some of them may never have taken communion that's up to you as to when they're old enough but we do teach them about that in children's church and several kids got saved recently.

We started teaching and having communion, so praise God for that.

Let's look at Ephesians, chapter five, and I'm gonna be reading verses one and two out of the message Bible, and so I just like the way that it flows.

Ephesians five, one.

It says watch what God does.

And then you do it like children who learn proper behavior from their parents.

Mostly what God does is love.

You Keep company with him and learn a life of love.

Observe how Christ loved us.

His love was not cautious, but it was extravagant.

He didn't love in order to get something from us, but to give everything to us.

Love like that, to give everything of himself.

See, he gave everything of himself to us, and so I wanted to talk today and give you a message entitled Remember who you Are, and it's not just for the kids, it's for everybody.

We need to sometimes just take a little time and remember who we are.

The world is already trying to define who you are, trying to get you to think differently about yourself than the Bible says.

You know I am who the Bible says I am.

I can do what the Bible says I can do.

I can have what the Bible says I can have.

Amen, I mean.

You know, when you start talking to yourself like that, that's a confession of faith, and your faith just starts to rise up and you stop being defined by these liars.

Now that write columns in the paper that are on the newscasts.

They're not news or propaganda and so remember who you are.

You know God is love and he has power.

I like what Brother Osteen taught me he taught me, you know, I'd rather be who he is than have what he has.

I'd rather be who he is than have what he has.

Now, do you have to make a choice?

Well, no, but it's about keeping our heart right and remembering who we are.

We're who he made us when we got saved.

He recreated I mean, the old man passed away.

Behold, all things have become new.

We became new creatures in Christ Jesus, and so we are something of him.

He implanted in us his character, and that's who we are.

It's not how we feel about something, it's not our emotion, it's who we are.

He lives on the inside of you.

We need to remember that Everywhere you go he goes.

We're ambassadors.

We're of the royal priesthood of the holy nation.

Everywhere we go, the kingdom of God goes.

What is an ambassador?

Well, it's representative of a foreign country on foreign soil.

You know, I remember one time I went to New Delhi.

I didn't get to go to the New Delhi-Delhi, but I went to New Delhi.

You talk about pollution.

I don't think anybody needs to tell us about pollution until they've been to India and Philippines and places like that.

Manila, god.

Anyway, I drove down this boulevard where it seemed like all the world's embassies are located.

Well, those didn't have an audience with the president of India.

At the time met him at the US Embassy right there and all down this road there's all these flags of different countries.

You had the Russian Embassy, the American Embassy, you know, every nation was right there in the capital of India, which is New Delhi.

And we have the same thing in Washington.

We have an embassy row where all the embassies are located.

So each one of those embassies is not India, that's American soil right there, and so the ambassador is on American soil, right in the midst of India.

See, we live in this world.

But let me tell you something everywhere we are, it represents the kingdom of God.

We're standing on the kingdom of God here and no man made rules can rule us, amen.

So he placed who he is inside of us, in his own character.

We need to remember that and we're to imitate.

You know, I like the.

The King James says be followers.

Therefore, if God is dear children and walk in love King James says it that way.

The word followers means imitators.

When you look it up, we're to imitate God, we're to be like him.

Why?

Because he made us in his image and likeness and he has characteristics that we have implanted on the inside.

We're to imitate our heavenly father.

And how do we do that?

Well, we need to imitate Jesus.

Jesus said if you've seen me, you've seen the father.

Well, who is Jesus?

Well, he's the word of God.

See, you can't get away from the word and you can't get away from the Holy spirit living on the inside of you.

He lives on the inside, and so we have this ability to imitate God.

In fact, we're challenged to do so, and I remember when my children were young Claire was just a little girl and she'd kind of watch her mama real close.

And Jay came along a little later and when he'd got to be about three or four, he'd go with me, sometimes in my truck.

I built houses right there in my neighborhood, in my subdivision where I live, there's a house down the road that I'm building, so every now and then he'd go with me, ride with me, and one morning we were pouring concrete on a slab and I had some rubber boots in the back of the pickup and they asked me to come over and look at something and see if it was gonna be okay before they covered it up with concrete.

So I waited out there and my rubber boots in the concrete, you know.

And oh, jay was so impressed with that so I had to buy him a pair of little rubber boots so he could wait around in the concrete with us.

He was so thrilled to get to walk out there with those guys whenever they'd pour the concrete.

He would just love to get out there.

You know, just so impressed.

See what a deal he was imitating his dad.

He was following me.

Amen, are y'all with me now?

That's what we're supposed to do with our heavenly father.

So I wanna talk about three young people who lived in a time in the Bible when it wasn't easy to serve God.

It didn't make him popular, as a matter of fact, they were persecuted.

One was persecuted by his own family.

If you look down on you know just, they mistreated him.

Really, he's the youngest of eight boys and it fell on him to be his keeper of his father.

Sheep, I'm talking about David.

So today I wanna talk about three of these wonderful characters of the Bible young people, teenagers David, daniel and Esther.

David, daniel and Esther and each of them had these same characteristics they were all fearless, they were all faithful, amen.

And they were all focused.

They didn't turn from the right hand to the left, they were focused, like laser focus on what they were doing.

They were fearless, faithful and focused.

And so I'll just break it down and each one talk about one aspect and start with David.

We kinda know the story of David.

In Goliath I mean David's 16, 17 years old there's a teenager young, yes.

His father says go out to the battleground, check on your brothers, the three older brothers that never had any use for him, never did speak nice to him.

And he goes out there to check on him.

He finds his brothers and the king, king Saul, hiding behind rocks from Goliath, who's down in the valley, cursing and blaspheming God and mocking the armies of Israel.

They're all afraid, hiding, trying to stay out of the line of sight.

But here comes this young whippersnapper.

He's a young whippersnapper.

Here comes this young whippersnapper and he's got bread and cheese for his brothers, you know.

And he comes rolling up on the scene and he does not like what he sees.

He doesn't like what he's hearing.

He said what's going on here?

Isn't there anybody gonna confront this man?

He's a heathen.

He has no covenant with God.

Here we're in covenant with Almighty God.

And we're down here afraid, and King Saul talked to him.

Well, son, you just better be careful.

Ah, he said God to give him into my hands.

He said there was a bear that came up and tried to take one of my sheep.

I killed him.

There was a lion.

I took the lamb out of the lion's mouth and smote him and killed him.

He smote him with his hand.

I mean, god, I don't know about you, but I've never killed a lion with a blow.

He here.

He killed a bear.

And how could he do that?

And God did that.

He said the Lord gave them into my hands.

He said this Philistine is no different.

God will give him into my hands.

Woo, glory to God Fearless.

The Bible says he ran toward the giant.

He said this day, my God will give you into my hands.

He whirled that slingshot over his head and let that stone go and it sank right in between his eyes.

He fell down and David went up to him with his own sword.

David didn't even have a sword, all he had was a slingshot and five smooth stones he picked up out of the brook.

He didn't need but one Didn't need five, and he cut off his head with his own sword.

Amen, fearless.

Everybody shout fearless.

Well, you know.

But pastor, I, you know, sometimes I listen, don't go by how you feel, it's not.

It's not how you feel, it's who you are.

See, I'd rather be who he is than have what he has.

Listen, he has made you fearless.

He didn't give you the spirit of timidity, he didn't give you the spirit of shy.

Shy is not a fruit of the spirit.

Well, I'm just shy, that's just how I am.

Can you imagine Jesus being shy?

Let's be like God.

Let's be bold.

The devil is bold.

The devil's people are bold.

They're bold to lie.

They're bold to say all these horrible things.

Let's be bold for God.

Let's be fearless and let's remind ourselves of who we are.

We're fearless.

Everybody say I'm fearless, I'm fearless, praise God.

Sunday, and I was talking about a confession I picked up from the American sniper, and you know he was in the middle of the brutal treatment that they prepared.

They basically tortured those Navy SEALs on their way to becoming a SEAL.

And that's how they separate the men from the boys.

The boys all leave and quit, the men stay there.

And so American sniper the guy that was playing him in the movie.

You know he was Chris.

Kyle had 170, some odd confirmed kills in Iraq, one at a time.

But in order to ever get in that position he had to become a Navy SEAL.

And you go through all this training and he was the oldest in his group and they were just said go ring the bell.

All your suffering to be over.

You want to quit?

You'd feel like quitting right now.

Just go ahead and get up.

Kyle, come on, you know.

And if they're pouring cold water on him, he's flirting him right in the face with this ice, cold water.

His hands are behind his neck, the only thing that's on the ground is just his tail.

His legs are up, his body's up.

It's hard to do that for hours like this.

You're in this position and you're right on the edge of hypothermia or on the edge of breathing that water into your face.

It's working right up your nose.

They're typically they're kind of torturing them.

Really, if you really want to know the truth, see, they've got to be able to pass the test of ignoring pain and discomfort, no matter what.

I mean they can eat the things that make a billy gold puke.

See why?

Why do they put them through that Because they're going to have to survive on the battlefield sometime.

How you feel, kyle?

You want to just get on up and ring the bell.

You're suffering to be over.

How do you feel, kyle?

How do you feel?

He said I'm feeling dangerous.

Come on, let's just practice it.

I'm feeling dangerous.

Glory to God.

I love that I've been.

I just I stole it from Chris Kyle.

I'm dangerous to the devil.

He's throwing his best shot.

He's blown the.

He's blown the shell up at my feet.

And I'm just saying I'm feeling dangerous.

Glory to God.

So be fearless.

Everybody say I'm fearless In the face of the enemy, all right.

The second character is Daniel.

In Daniel, chapter one, daniel and the Hebrew children were said to be 10 times smarter than all the heathen children.

We used to pray that over our kids every day.

Every day when we'd send them out the door to go to school, they got hands laid on them.

You're 10 times smarter, you're 10 times smarter.

You're 10 times smarter.

Every day, every day.

Never miss a day.

It came a day when one time we were kind of behind schedule and we were rushing around and we just didn't have.

You know, we didn't pray and I forget which one of them turned around and said Dad, you didn't pray over us, didn't know that they cared that much.

You know they rolled their eyes.

Listen, they might roll their eyes, they might seem indifferent, but I'm gonna tell you, our kids depend on us to cover them.

They're going out into the world.

They're 10 times smarter.

Well, you know, the thing about Daniel was that he was faithful to God.

He didn't care who saw him worship God.

He was a worshiper.

And so that's true of David.

He was a worshiper.

How do you think he got God's character spending all night watching those sheep?

And he worshipped God.

He wrote most of the book of Psalms.

He was a worshiper.

You can't hang out with God and not some of God rub off on you, and the same with Daniel.

So Daniel was faithful to God.

He worshipped him and you know his enemies came by.

You know, because it didn't make him popular.

He was wiser than all the rest of the king's astrologers and all of his wizards and all you know all the occult that they depended on.

Daniel was wiser than all of them Known for his wisdom, and I didn't make him popular with the rest of them.

So they went by his house and saw him worshiping God and bowing down and lifting his hands and all of that.

And they said, oh, let's get the king to make a proclamation.

That's illegal to worship God.

Worship anybody, but the king.

You can only bow to the king.

You cannot bow to any God.

In other words, just, you've gotta close your church on.

From now on, you're a non-essential business.

You don't have any right to worship God on Sunday or Wednesday or any other time, says the government.

What?

The same things going on right now.

Monkey pox, that'd be the next dread.

I don't care what they do.

They'll never be able to turn that into COVID.

They're trying so hard.

It's ridiculous.

It's really an STD.

Children, you can ask your parents what that means.

Yeah, they're lying, and they did the same thing in Bible days.

I'm saying it's not.

It wasn't popular back then to worship God.

It's not popular right now, but we're faithful to God.

See, that's the other thing.

He was faithful to God no matter what, and when they passed the law, he violated it.

Hey, daniel, worship.

We saw him.

Were.

You didn't king, didn't you make this proclamation?

Yeah, I did, but I didn't know what.

See, kings can be weak.

Saul was weak.

He was hiding.

That's the king, the king of Persia, was weak.

He made this law, said oh, you can't worship anybody but me.

He didn't even compose the law.

His helpers did.

That's exactly what's going on now.

Do you think that Biden is smart enough to compose anything?

He can't even compose a sentence, much less a law.

He doesn't know what he's signing.

So the king was tricked into passing a law.

It made it illegal for David, for Daniel, to worship God.

So they had to throw him in the lines, then hungry lines, and all the king felt bad.

He just felt so bad, he felt so guilty, but he didn't stop it.

Well, you know, I made that proclamation.

I gotta live by what I've got.

You know, say just a weenie.

This is the kind of politicians we have today.

They can't do the right thing for fear of some catastrophe.

Mostly it's gonna cost them money, cost them votes.

Try to appeal to everybody except for God and don't appeal to God very well.

So you know, the king didn't sleep all night long.

He worried about Daniel, worried about he go, went over there at dawn he said oh, daniel, was your God able to deliver you?

And Daniel says oh, king, live forever.

Oh, king, live forever.

Thy servant is fine.

God stopped the mouths of the lions and he was so relieved and he was so aggravated at all those other people that tricked him into making this proclamation.

He threw them into the lions then.

Can you imagine they're double hungry by now.

Everybody say Daniel was faithful.

He was faithful even unto death.

We're gonna have to.

You know God's not looking for us to die, but he's looking up for us to live for him in front of this ungodly generation and get a few of them saved.

I believe some of them will get saved.

They'll just see somebody that's got faithful, that they're faithful to God, no matter what Children, when you go to school, don't just gobble your lunch down, bow your head and bless your food before you eat it and don't worry about anybody else whether they think that's good or bad.

You can just say hey, was anybody wanna bless the food?

I wanna bless my food right now.

Anybody wanna join me?

See, that's what I'm talking about.

See, fearless, faithful.

And the last one to talk about is Esther.

You can read her testimony in the book of Esther, but a beautiful Jewish girl, a teenager.

It called the Eye of the King.

Again, god can give you favor in the sight of kings and he certainly did give her favor.

It was love at first sight.

I mean, he laid his eyes on her and had to have her in his court and brought her in and gave her servants and she took baths and all kinds of herbs and anointments and everything.

For I don't know how long it's in the Bible.

I forgot how long long time she was separated to be his wife.

And in the meantime the present queen messed up and she was fired.

Hey, queenie, you're fired.

I'm gonna hire this one over here Made her queen.

Now, the king didn't know she was Jewish, she didn't advertise her.

Her uncle, mordecai, which was more like her father, raised her, said they don't be advertising who you are.

Just be who you are, but don't be talking about being a Jew.

May not come to your favor.

And sure enough, had anti-Semites, just like you have anti-Semitic people and anti-Christ people today.

The people hate God, they hate Christians, they hate Jews.

The same people that hate Jews hate Christians.

They just don't have the guts to say so.

There's more of us than there are Jews.

They seem to be able to get away with being anti-Semitic.

I don't know how that is, but anyway, so she.

She had this man on the that that hated her uncle Mordecai.

Because Mordecai wouldn't bow to Haman, the wicked Haman.

He was in the king's court.

He demanded everybody just pay him obeisance and always be very reverent toward him.

When he was in public, mordecai wouldn't give him the time of day You're not God, I'm not bowing to you.

So he hated, he hated him, he hated all Jews and he tricked the king into signing a law that said on such and such a day, all Jews across 147 provinces of Persia are going to die.

Talk about stupid.

How would you sign something like that On the say so of one imbecile full of himself?

How would you do that?

I tell you, because not all kings have a brain.

A whole lot of people that are running the nations of this world don't have a brain.

They have no common sense.

They live in an echo chamber.

They live with a whole bunch of yes men around them to tell them oh, you're a great king, you ought to read this little short story.

The emperor has no clothes, kind of give you insight.

So he signs this proclamation in Mordecai, informs Esther and says hey, this is bad, we're all gonna die unless you do something.

God didn't sit you up there to be queen, just so you could kind of get your nails done.

Get those extensions on your eyelashes, you know the kind that go out about three inches, and then the also they flare out to the side like this Woo, woo, woo, woo, woo, woo.

I just wanna know that if somebody's eye lids have to be strengthened before they put those on them Looks like they'd have to lift weights for a while.

Anyway, no, it's for such a time as this that you have been given this position, and make no mistake about it.

If you don't do anything, deliverance will come another way.

Oh, listen, that's just those verses kind of hit me, because I'm gonna tell you, if we don't do something about what's going on right now and it starts with our young people, grades two through five We've got to implant it in them how important they are.

Children, you're so important, and if we don't give you the tools that you need to possess the land where you are, then we will have failed and deliverance will have to come another way.

So she fasted and prayed for three days.

All of the ones that were her friends did the same, and she was like.

The ones that were her friends did the same.

Mordecai, they had a you know, and we're talking about millions of Jews that are gonna die here, not just the ones right there, but all around the world.

As huge as that kingdom was, and the king was oblivious to how evil that was, he just did it because Haaman influenced him.

And so, during time of prayer and fasting, god gave Esther the plan for how to be the instrument of deliverance for her nation and to expose the evil.

God did both and God wants to do both of those things right now.

He wants to deliver people from this evil, these evil laws that are being.

It's not laws, they're lawlessness.

They're putting lawlessness into the law.

Well, we can't, you know, we just can't legislate morality.

Well, that's a lie, because somebody's morality is being, or somebody's immorality is being, legislated every day.

This country has got a history of legislating according to the Bible.

Look at all the imagery on the buildings in Washington DC.

If we're not a Christian nation, why is Moses there?

Why is all this imagery of the Bible there?

It's all a lie.

They have to lie.

They can't stand on the truth, because the truth means that they're gonna get voted out.

Well, they need to be voted out or whatever out, whatever it takes to get them out.

Are you with me now?

So she received this plan.

It was so brilliant it's one of the greatest testimonies in the Bible of how this worked and I mean it took two solid days to execute her plan.

And I mean she led Haman right down the royal pathway and I mean humiliated him.

And not only that, he got hung, along with his 10 evil sons.

The whole generation of his family perished because he raised his hands against God's covenant people.

Well, you mean we want people to die?

No, I'm not saying that we want people to die.

I'm saying that we wanna expose evil.

We want the evildoers exposed and labeled for what they are.

They're certainly not heroes.

They don't deserve to have a middle of honor from America, a middle of freedom, middle of freedom.

Yeah, biden handed out a whole bunch of medals of freedom here recently.

Might as well.

Just let's go to a carnival, let's win a teddy bear, let's throw the ring over the Coke bottle and let's win a 10.

That's about what it's worth.

Some of the people that got these medals of freedom cheapens everything about our nation.

The whole world is laughing, by the way.

So she exposed evil, haman, and the king reversed his decree and he said what else do you want?

Up to the half of my kingdom.

I'll give it to you.

Oh king, I just want you to save my people.

I want you to decide.

I want you to reverse.

They said absolutely, sign all these orders.

And everywhere they were, they were gathered to kill him.

He said now you can turn around and kill them, that we're going to kill you.

All over the world, jews rose up and their accusers and their persecutors got the worst.

Are y'all with me now?

So what was she?

She was laser focused.

She didn't get distracted, got about her eyelashes and her nails.

She didn't listen.

She's weighted on hand and foot.

She's the queen.

She's the queen of an immense kingdom.

She didn't get.

She did.

She was focused on her people and she was focused on exposing evil.

Can we do any less than that now that we're alive?

In this time?

We've got to be focused.

Everybody say focused, amen, faithful, fearless.

These are those examples that we have for not only our children, but for ourselves.

It's good to check up on ourselves and check up on our, our thinking and make sure that you know it's a good time, as any beginning of school, and it's I don't know if you're aware, but this is the ninth of off Tisha Bob.

The Jews call it the month of all, and the ninth is historic and because that's the day that the 10 spies gave the evil report.

That's the day that both temples in Jerusalem were destroyed.

That's the day when England expelled the Jews in 1200 something.

England's got a big, long history of anti-Semitism.

Spain in 1492.

Does that date sound familiar?

They banished all Jews, gave them 90 days to get out of Spain.

That was the Muslim influence over a Christian nation.

Spain was a Christian nation but the Moors, the Moorish Muslims, came in and what happened to the Jews?

They were out on Tisha Bob 1492.

So this and there's several other huge defeats, but this date is a date of morning and Jews all over the world have been for the last three weeks, have been fasting and and afflicting themselves, and it's kind of like a solemn time when they examine their attitudes toward God and and remember the disasters that have happened, mainly because they turned away from God and God's hand of protection lifted off of them.

And so you know it's not exactly a celebration.

But you know, I didn't know that this was going to be Tisha Bob when we had back to school service, but I just believe it just fits right in with the messages.

It's time for us to examine where we are as a nation and as Christians.

What part do we play?

I think we've got to play a bigger part For such a time as this.

We've been chosen, amen, praise God.

So let's remember who we are and let God's love and light shine through us this year.

See how many people we can rescue out of this fire and this sin, get them set on the right pathway.

And let's remember who we are.

Let's lift our hands right now.

Thank you, lord, for reminding us who we are.