People Who Crossover

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Tonight, the message I have for you is it's called people who cross over, in other words, people who break barriers, who go through obstacles with the help of the supernatural help of God, and it is something that my dad preached about the great crossover.

It's something that he mentioned way back in 2017.

He started talking about hey, we've not been this way before, out of Joshua, chapter 3.

Joshua 3 · chapter mention

And we saw a big shift in our church, and now I feel like we're in another shifting, and it's a good thing.

We know that God has a good plan for our church, for all of us, and so I just wanted to revisit that idea tonight, and then we're going to talk about four different kinds of barriers that God helps us to cross over and to overcome Amen.

So I'm going to just read to you that, first of all, we know that this whole concept is out of Mark 4.

Jesus has authored us to be people who conquer, and on Mark 4.35, it says on the same day, when evening had come, he, jesus, said to them, the disciples, let us cross over to the other side and we all know the story and I might get to it later but let us cross over to the other side.

This is a concept in our life where we need to, when we see an obstacle, we need to be able to say let's get over it, let's cross over to the other side.

And then in Joshua, chapter 3, I'm going to start reading in verse 3.

Joshua 3 · chapter mention

Actually, I'll just I'll just go straight to verse 5.

It says Joshua said to the people sanctify yourselves for tomorrow.

The Lord will do wonders among you.

And then Joshua spoke to the priest saying take up the Ark of the Covenant and cross over before the people.

And of course, the Ark of the Covenant represented and did carry the literal presence of Almighty.

God, the creator of the universe, dwelt in this box made of gold, made of acacia, wood and gold.

And he, that was how he communicated and interacted with his people, israel, back in those days.

And so they were going to take the Ark of the Covenant.

They were going to take with the presence of God.

They were going to cross over the Jordan River.

I want you to see what this represents tonight.

The people of Israel, as you know, had a promise through their forefather, abraham, that they had special land that they were going to inhabit, that God had set aside this land just for them and, in the process of time, though, instead of inhabiting that land, they had become slaves in Egypt.

Can anyone relate?

Can anyone ever feel like they are maybe off of the plan of God?

God has a promise for them, but they ended up somewhere else and here they were.

They were slaves in Egypt for 400 years and then, as you recall, moses led them out of slavery and, on the day of Passover, they left.

They crossed over.

They crossed over the Red Sea, but they still hadn't made it to the promised land.

And then, how many years did they wander?

Say it, church, come on.

How many years in the wilderness did they wander?

I know, we know 40 years.

They wandered in the wilderness, still not in the promised land that God had promised to Abraham hundreds of years ago.

And but God said look, I'm doing something new and I want you to cross over with my presence.

I want you to cross over, and I was studying this concept.

This is a message I preached back in 2018.

But at the time I was studying, I saw that I'd never seen this before.

The Hebrew people, or God's people of covenant in that time, the Hebrew people it is actually from the word there's a derivative word Hebrew.

Hebrew came from Hebrew, which is means to cross over.

So, in other words, the Hebrew and even Abraham's name is descended from that same word Abraham Hebrew.

And what it means to me is that crossing over isn't just something that God's people do.

It's who we are, it is in our name.

It is so much a part of what we do.

We cross over, we overcome.

We are God's people.

We are to cross over.

Abraham crossed over the Euphrates, so he was a crossover guy, he was a crossover person.

Jacob, his grandson, crossed over the Jordan River.

Also, moses and the Israelites, as we talked about, they crossed over the Red Sea.

It was a huge, insurmountable obstacle, but they crossed over it.

And now God is telling Joshua, I'm going to lead you and these people across the Jordan River again, only this time not only is the Jordan River at flood stage and not only is that scary enough, but you're going to go into this land that I've called you to, and there's a huge city of Jericho there, and it's got walls so thick you can write a chariot around them.

It is such, and there are giants in the land.

Remember, and remember when Israel first had sent in the spies to see you know, could we beat these guys?

Let me see if we could just go in on our own.

And they were so scared.

They sent in 12 spies and 10 of the 12 said we can't do it, we're not able, we're not able, we're like grasshoppers in their site and in our site we can't do it, we can't.

And they had unbelief.

But there were two spies we don't even know the names of the unbelieving spies, but there were two spies, joshua and Caleb, who looked in and said we are well able to take the land.

Our God is with us.

We are well able.

And so there are four types of barriers.

They had barriers there.

They had natural barriers, they had people barriers, they had the spiritual barrier of unbelief, and then they had mental barriers of just not seeing the way, not having God's perspective on the situation.

And so they had.

That's why, right here, god tells Joshua, he says sanctify yourselves, get out of all of this natural thinking, get out of the world's wisdom that you're stuck in, and I need you to step up into the supernatural realm.

I need you to sanctify yourself, shed the sin and the small human thinking that you have had.

And so I think that's what God I know, that's what God's telling us now we need to shed those mindsets and those barriers, and so let's go through them one by one.

First of all was the spiritual barrier.

He said sanctify yourself, sanctify yourself.

And what I know the spiritual barrier is there was a separation.

And even in this passage, if you rewind a little bit, in Joshua 3, it says God told Joshua the ark is going to go before you, but there will be a space in verse gosh, in the middle of verse 3, there will be a space between you and it about 2,000 cubits by measure, so that's 1,000 yards, so that's 10 football fields, before you can even see the ark.

The ark is so far away.

The presence of God, you know it's there.

It's way, way, way up there.

There's got to be this reverence, there's got to be this, because you're sinful, you know, and we're not able to be close to God.

And then it says you have not passed this way before.

I'm about to do something new that you've never even seen, and God's about to do something new that we've never even seen.

When the world is getting darker on the outside, I'm telling you God's church is getting brighter on the inside and that light is bursting forth, and it's for these last times, amen and so.

But there was a distance, there was a separation, and even later in the Old Testament, when the Jews worship God, they had to do so in a very separated way.

The ark of the covenant.

Here it's separated by distance, but usually in the tabernacle it was separated by a veil.

And later, even when they built the temple, the permanent temple where they worshiped permanently, there was I have been told that the veil was six inches thick, so it was some kind of fabric that was so thick and it hung in front of the ark of the covenant so that people could not see it.

In fact, people couldn't even go near that veil.

That was for priests only in that area.

So if you're just a regular guy, you couldn't even get anywhere near the presence of God.

You had to depend on the priests to do it for you.

And what we need now is we need to come boldly to the throne of grace.

The Bible says, hebrews 10, 19 says, therefore, brethren having boldness to enter the holiest, that means that place where the ark of the covenant sat.

We can enter there by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way, which he consecrated for us through the veil that is his flesh and having a high priest over the house of God.

Let us draw near.

Everybody say near.

I got to draw near to God with a true heart and full assurance of faith.

Having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water, hallelujah, every part of us has been redeemed our bodies, our conscience, our spirit, our heart.

We have been cleansed.

Our mind is renewed with the word of God, we can come in boldly into the throne of God.

But I chose this scripture because it says that Jesus consecrated this way for us.

He went through that veil.

It says that that is his flesh, and so there's a veil, and I see it as a fleshly like our body.

Our sinful nature separates us from the plan of God, and yet Jesus, he ripped that veil.

I'm telling you on the day that Jesus died, when he was crucified and died the minute his spirit left his body.

The witnesses say that that six inch thick veil in the temple, it was ripped from top to bottom.

In other words, God had himself took that veil of separation between his presence and his people and he ripped it all the way down so that we can now come to the throne of grace and find grace to help in time of need.

But it took a tearing of the flesh.

In this case it was Jesus' flesh and he did that for us.

But we're going to have to sometimes tear our worldly desires.

We're going to have to rip that away so that we can just come straight to God's throne, and so we're able to do that, praise God.

So whenever the Word gives us advice, there's always a tendency.

Sometimes we have this tendency to say, well, I can't do that.

You know God, that's too hard, that's too hard.

Well, god would never tell us to do something in His Word.

Just the Ten Commandments you know, or just all the advice he gives us in the epistles about how to live a holy and consecrated life.

Those things are not.

It's easy to serve God Because God makes it.

He gives us grace to do it.

Once we're saved and born again, our spirits belong to Him.

It is the easiest thing in the world to obey God.

What is hard?

The Bible says the way of the transgressor is hard.

Proverbs says that is hard.

But to just obey God, I'm telling you, he makes it easy for us to obey Him, to obey His Word.

It's the best way to live.

So, anyway, we can tear away those ungodly desires and just and focus straight on God.

So that was barrier number one.

That spiritual barrier of sin has been ripped away.

It has been torn, that veil has been lifted.

You know just another thought on that when there's a priceless piece of art, you know it's on display and they want everybody to see it and be surprised, you know they have to cover it with a veil so nobody can really see how awesome it is.

And then, at the right moment, they whoo, they unveil that art and then, wow, you know we can see the sculpture.

It's a masterpiece and God's unveiling some things for us.

He wants us to see His plan in all of its detail and he wants us to enjoy and His glory needs to be seen.

It needs to be seen Another veil in the Bible.

How many of you can remember Moses?

When Moses first came down, he had spent some time in the presence of God, and so God's glory literally shone on His face and it was so bright that the children of Israel could not look at Him because it was so.

It was too bright, it was intimidating, it was scary, and so he or it hurt their eyes.

I don't know, but they.

It was so, so uncomfortable for everyone around that they had to put a veil.

Moses had to wear a veil on his face so they couldn't see the glory of God shining.

What, how sad.

It's another reason why Christians should never wear a mask.

Amen, we should be able to let the I mean never.

I don't know, maybe you're a doctor doing surgery or something, but I'm telling you we ought to be able to let the glory of God shine on our face habitually and continually.

Amen.

And so that veil, that veil that separates and that hides the glory, has been removed and we're able to shine.

So that's a barrier and it's been taken away, all right.

So there's another.

There are mental barriers.

That's the number two kind of barriers, mental barriers.

And the children of Israel had that was unbelief.

The way they their self-image, the way they saw themselves.

Oh, we're just a nomadic people.

We've been in the wilderness, wandering around for 40 years.

Sure, god gave us a promise a long time ago, but where is it now?

Look at those big people over there inhabiting our land.

They are, we can't, and it's a, it's a sad mindset, and God wants us to break out of that.

That is, we need to focus on God, how big he is and how big his promises and how faithfully is to keep it to us, so that we will never have that.

Stop looking at yourself.

Of course you're not big enough.

Of course you're not strong enough to handle it.

None of us are.

We cannot fill the shoes, we cannot fill the call that God has had, that he's given us, but we're not alone.

We have him, and so in that way, we can do all things through Christ, who strengthens us.

Amen.

Um, not only that, but in this time there was a mental barrier of leadership, because Moses had been the leader all these years.

He's the guy that got him out of Egypt.

That was a big deal, and now Moses, my servant, is dead.

Therefore, josh was supposed to arise.

Now there's a change in leadership, and all the people of Israel got.

They got to look to a new leader.

It's so scary.

Well, they had to.

They had to accept.

This was the plan of God.

God is.

God, is vindicating Joshua in this time.

Hey, you know, moses led you through the Red Sea, but I'm going to lead you across this Jordan and into your land.

There was a change of method of God's guidance at this time.

You know, maybe you have been in your life, you are used to hearing from God in a certain way, uh, and I've noticed this especially as people mature in the Lord, it seems like baby Christians just have that grace on them because God is so, so close to them.

Just like we're close to our newborn babies, we never, never leave their, their, you know their side, right, we're with them almost all the time, unless they're asleep, and we then, even then, we have a baby monitor right there so we can listen when they're breathing.

You know we have, we're so close to them, and that's the way God is to a baby Christian.

He'll talk to you.

It seems like he talks to you all the time.

He always gives you instruction and then later, as we grow in the Lord, um, those instructions come a little farther apart, because God expects us to grow up a little bit and do the things that he gave us instruction to do Right.

And so, um, there's just a growth, and in this time, in the, in the, the children of Israel.

They had been led through the wilderness, they had a pillar of fire by night and a cloud by day.

They had a literal presence of God to look at and everyone could see it, and wherever it went, they just followed it and it would rest on a certain spot and they thought, oh, let's make a camp here, because the presence of God is resting here, and then it would move.

And so they, oh, let's break camp, let's move to the next place.

And so it was really easy to follow God.

And now is a little different.

Come here right now.

Presence of God was in a box in the Ark of the Covenant and they could never really see it, they hadn't even get close to it, and so it was a little different and they had to depend on their leadership to tell them what God was saying, and the priests and Joshua.

And so it was a different form, it was different, and they had to overcome all of that.

And I just want to remind you out of Ephesians 1, the prayer of Paul over the Ephesian church, in verse 17,.

It says he prayed that the God of the Lord, jesus Christ, the Father of glory listen to this may give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation and the knowledge of him, the eyes of your understanding being enlightened.

He wants to enlighten your understanding so all of those mental barriers can just be blown away.

We've got to pray this though.

We've got to do this and live this so that we can be enlightened, and then we'll know.

We'll know all these things the hope of his calling, the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints.

That means what he was going to get out of us, amen.

And what is the exceeding greatness of his power toward us who believe.

I mean, have we even scratched the surface of his power?

Do we even even, after all we've seen in the church and in our own lives, have we even scratched the surface?

God wants to show it to us.

You know, there are examples of just brain fog in the world and just if you take it down to a natural level, there are people who have suffered brain injuries and it's very puzzling and we still don't understand all about it.

But there was one guy who suffered a terrible brain injury but when he healed up well enough to get out of the hospital he could suddenly play the piano.

Like just the ability, just his brain.

Something in his brain got rearranged and he had this new talent.

There was one lady that was had a just a normal Midwestern accent and when she woke up from her brain injury she had a really thick Eastern European accent.

Really, just something in her brain just changed.

And then there were just.

I remember Smith Wigglesworth, the mighty man of God, in the early 20th century.

He lived in England and he was a plumber and he was not saved and he never learned to read.

But once he got saved, he learned and God called him to the ministry.

He began to pray and God would.

He would be able to read, but he would only be able to read the Bible.

So there was like a I don't know what that is, I just know that the eyes of his understanding were enlightened and he could now do something he couldn't do before.

He could do a spiritual act that he could not do before.

God knew he would need that gift to fulfill the call of God on his life.

And we're still quoting him, smith Wigglesworth.

A day, a mighty man of God raised many people from the dead, literally, and got many people saved and healed and delivered.

So there are mental barriers that we need to overcome.

Imagine if, like if it took, those people had a brain injury and now all of a sudden they can play the piano or they can speak a different language, or there was actually one person who could speak a different language and that was a brain injury.

So if the devil can bring some kind of harm to somebody and yet it unlocks something in their brain, imagine if we really pray to Ephesians one and we really believe that God would open the eyes of our understanding, that he would really turn on the flood lamp.

I mean, do not be limited.

Do not be limited by the grades you used to make in school or what people told you about how smart or dumb you were or whatever.

None of that matters, because you have a spirit and the eyes of your understanding can be enlightened by the Lord.

Amen.

So let's get through our mental barriers.

And then there are literal, natural barriers.

These, the children of Israel had to cross the Jordan River, literally had to cross it, and at that time of year it was flooding, it had overflowing its banks.

And what did God do?

Very much like the Red Sea parting as soon as the priests who were carrying the ark of the covenant as soon as they crossed and they put their foot into the edge of that flood water.

Then, way upstream, in another town, the water started standing up like a heap.

God just built an invisible dam and all of the waters from the Jordan River started standing up until they flowed past and there was dry ground and the entire nation of Israel marched over into their promised land and the battle of Jericho still lay ahead of them.

They did not know what was about to happen, but God told they did have a word from God.

Tomorrow I'll do wonders among you.

And he did wonders for them and he's doing wonders for you.

He's doing wonders for all of us in this time.

And so there was a river at flood stage, there were forces of nature.

You know, earlier, in my very first scripture I shared with you tonight was out of Mark four, where Jesus said let us cross over to the other side.

Well, remember what happened right after that?

Him and his disciples got in the boat.

Jesus fell asleep in the boat and then a storm whips up and it is so big, the waves are so dark, it looks impossible to get over.

But Jesus and the disciples had to wake up.

Jesus, jesus mastered don't you know?

We are perishing, don't you even care?

And what did Jesus?

He got up.

He rebuked the wind and the waves, and he told them peace, be still.

And then a great calm came and they, they accomplished their mission that Jesus originally said let us cross over to the other side.

There was one of those things that Jesus was teaching them.

He was treating them like a teenager.

He was treating them like hey, I've given you some orders, we're going to cross over, and I trust you so much that I am now going to fall asleep.

And.

But they needed a little bit more.

They needed a little bit more instruction, and sometimes we do too.

But God will supernaturally, by His word, I'm telling you, we can speak to the storm.

We can say peace, be still.

We can come against these forces of nature, natural barriers like sickness, disease, poverty and lack.

You come to this church long enough you're going to hear about how to overcome some of these things, these, these very things that come against us.

It doesn't mean that we will not fight them.

The devil does come, he comes and attacks and he tries to bring us down, but they're illegal attacks.

They are illegal according to the word of God and we have, we can fight these attacks using His word and we should run the and the word is the legal power and the Holy Ghost is the firepower that that can run the devil off, and so we need the fire of God more and more in our lives.

The more Holy Ghosts we have, the more firepower we really have to run these things off of our land, because they do try to come and and steal, kill and destroy in our lives and these are real natural barriers to us doing the will of God.

You know, I remember a time in the church in up until 2002, glorious way.

We did not own our own building, we did not own our own land, we rented.

We rented a space, one space, and then we moved to another space.

Then we moved to another space and there were so there were three different moves.

I'm in a church and we felt like the children of Israel wandering in the desert.

We really did feel like that and we knew God had promised us the land and and and.

The last place we moved.

We jokingly called the church in the cave because we did.

We were not allowed to have any signage out on the road, except for, like once on Sunday morning we could like put up a little roll, a little sign out on the side of Beltway 8 at Hammerley, but then after church was over, we'd have to roll it back in and and so nobody even knew that our church was even meeting there.

People couldn't find it.

We were meeting in another.

It was, it was another church, that it was their building, but they let us use it.

And so it was hard.

It was it.

We felt like we were and we shrunk in number.

We grew in power.

Lord, we had, we had prayer meetings, we had awesome moves of God, but it was, it was just a hard time in the church and we saw our finances dwindle, we saw our people dwindle and we just knew we had such an urgency and of course, we gave God, moved on my dad to to give a humongous offering so that in a long story short, we, we, we tell the story a lot, but but an unsaved businessman gave us, gave us, gave us the property that we had been, we had been paying on for years and years.

We had been paying on this property while renting another building, paying on this raw land, but we couldn't, we couldn't get the loan to build on anything on it.

It was, we were too financially strapped.

A bank looked at us and said no, no way, we're not loaning you money for a building.

And so it just looked like we were dying.

We were still paying out the, and the owner of that land, who had owner, financed it for us.

He came to us and and he said I got a deal for you and, a long story short, that man ended up canceling our debt on that land, giving us a different piece of property worth more in value than that one, and it was.

It was just a huge, huge miracle, and it and we say it a lot it actually it.

It was born in the 9-11 stock market crash, because in that crash, this man who was our landlord and our and our, our owner, financier of our land, this man had shorted the stock market right before 9-11 and he made a large sum of money, large sum of money in the stock market.

And so what was a, a hurt in a, in a terrible event for our nation, such a, such a human catastrophe, and yet, somehow, through that, god brought us a financial miracle that led to us having our promised land, and, and that was in 2002.

By 2004, we were able to move into this property that we're on now, and I'm telling you, god did a miracle for us.

It was a natural barrier, but God's supernatural power broke through it.

And then, finally, finally, the last type of obstacle is obstinate people.

There are always naysayers, trolls and just people who don't like you, who don't like the favor of God on your life, or who just don't agree with you and they'd like to tell you about it all the time.

And and for the people of Israel at this time, it was the people of Jericho, but we know that the people of Jericho if we read back in one chapter prior, actually the people of Jericho were afraid of the people of Israel.

They knew that God did wonders for them.

They remembered that miracle 40 years ago that God brought Israel through the Red Sea.

And if God split the Red Sea and and brought them apart, what?

What is God going to do to us?

And the fear of God and the fear of Israel fell all over Jericho and it became a self-fulfilling prophecy that they could not stand against.

It was awesome what God did and and even Jesus had.

He had naysayers, as we know, and those naysayers ultimately crucified Him.

But I like this, this passage out of Luke 9, and I won't read it verbatim, but I'm just going to refer to it.

When Jesus was passing through Samaria, there were some people who they did not receive him, it says in Luke 9.

It says but they did not receive him because his face was set for the journey to Jerusalem.

And when his disciples, james and John, saw this, they said Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them, just as Elijah did?

In other words, man, these people are going to speak bad about my, about my Jesus.

I'm going to blow him up with the power of God.

And he turned and rebuked them and he said you do not know what man or spirit you were of, for the Son of man did not come to destroy men's lives, but to save them.

And then Jesus just kept on walking.

He went to the next village and he just kept on his mission.

And sometimes we wish that the fire of God would just come and devour the naysayers and the trolls.

We do.

We want to see God's power.

But then and then Paul had that same thing.

He had trolls following him everywhere he went.

These, these, the Jewish religious, because he had been in leadership among the religious Jews of that day and they watched him betray them to now become a Christian.

Are you kidding me, paul?

They were so mad, they followed him everywhere he went.

They started up trouble against him.

They would stir up riots and controversy and through whisper campaigns and every other type of controversy.

And Paul, listen to what he said about it in 2 Corinthians 12, 7.

He says, lest I should be exalted above measure by the abundance of the revelations.

In other words, I'm hearing from God all the time.

I've got this active relationship with the Lord, I'm fruitful in all my ministry, but a thorn of the flesh, a messenger of Satan.

A thorn of the flesh was given to me, a messenger of Satan.

So who gave him the thorn of the flesh?

Did God give it to him?

No, it was a messenger of Satan.

The Satan gave him the trolls.

Okay, the trolls followed him, messengers of Satan to buffet me lest I be exalted above measure.

And concerning this thing, I pleaded with the Lord three times Lord, let him depart from me, get these trolls away.

Can I just have life without trolls?

And he said to me my grace is sufficient for you, for my strength is made perfect in weakness.

My grace is sufficient.

Therefore, most gladly, I will rather boast in my infirmities that the power of Christ may rest upon me.

Therefore, I take pleasure in these infirmities.

I'm not going to call down fire from heaven on these people.

I'm going to take pleasure in these reproaches against me and in these needs and persecutions and distresses, because they're for Christ's sake, for when I am weak then I am strong.

When it looks like the devil has you, that is when you have to lean on God's power more than ever.

And you are going to now.

You're out of your natural ability, which is where we should always be anyway.

Our natural ability is never enough to accomplish the plan of God.

We always got to lean on God, for his supernatural ability and his grace is sufficient for all of us, and no weapon formed against us shall prosper.

And so God is faithful.

He will redeem us from all of these types of obstacles, whether it comes from people, from the weather, from natural disasters, whether it comes from spiritual or mental barriers.

He can deliver for us from all of these barriers and he wants us to be delivered because he is doing a new thing for us tonight, and I'm excited.

Pastor had a word recently that things are shifting in our favor.

Praise God, not just in our favor, but in the favor of the kingdom of God because it looks like the kingdom of God from the outside.

For a while We've been losing ground and losing our freedoms and losing things, and now there's a shifting in the atmosphere, praise God, and we're going to see the hand of the blessing come against again on our nation.

In Jesus' name, the hand of blessing and favor has been on our church and I believe it's increasing and growing, and so we've got work to do and we've got some boundaries that we're crossing, amen, and some barriers, and we are well able.

Let's go up and take the land.

We are well able, in Jesus' name.