2022 - Lifting Up The Standard 2

And so let's lift our Bibles up and wave them around, make Jesus glad and the devil mad, and let's say this together Say, heavenly Father, I've tuned in to live stream tonight on purpose and intentionally, because I'm hungry and thirsty for more.

I thank you for allowing me to live in the last days and, father, I will succeed.

I will overcome, I will pursue and overtake and recover all that the devil has stolen from me, because I've been redeemed by the blood of the Lamb in Jesus' name, amen.

Let's look at Isaiah 59 tonight and it sounds kind of familiar.

It's because I'm gonna cover some ground here that I covered a couple of weeks ago on the second of January, sunday morning, and this message entitled 2022, lifting Up the Standard, and so this is the second part of a message.

I just wanted to share a couple of thoughts with you tonight.

It's not gonna be long and I'm not gonna take the time to go over everything I shared Sunday morning.

A lot of times I'll go over a lot of things and repeat it, but I won't do that tonight.

So if you haven't heard the message from me this morning, please get the media and listen to that, because it's a key to what God is gonna do in 2022.

Lifting Up the Standard.

So let's look at Isaiah 59, verse one.

Behold, the Lord's hand is not shortened that it cannot save, neither is his ear heavy that it cannot hear.

But your iniquities are separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid his face from you and he will not hear, for your hands are defiled with blood and your fingers with iniquity.

Your lips have spoken lies, your tongue have muttered perverseness.

None call it for justice, nor any pleaded for truth.

They trust in vanity and speak lies.

They conceive mischief and bring forth iniquity.

Now let's skip down to verse 14.

And judgment is turned away backward and justice standeth afar off, for truth is fallen in the street and equity cannot enter Yea.

Truth faileth and he that departed from evil maketh himself a prey.

And the Lord saw it.

And it displeased him that there was no judgment.

And he saw that there was no man and wondered hadn't?

And wondered that there was no intercessor that word wonder there.

He was astonished, he was stunned that there was no intercessor.

In other words, there was no one that stood up for right and for the people that were being mistreated.

Therefore, his arm brought salvation unto him and his righteousness.

It sustained him, for he put on righteousness as a breastplate and a helmet of salvation upon his head, and he put on the garments of vengeance for clothing and was clad with zeal as a cloak, according to their deeds.

Accordingly, he will repay fury to his adversaries, recompense to his enemies, to the islands he will repay recompense.

So shall they fear the name of the Lord from the West and his glory from the rising of the sun.

When the enemy shall come in like a flood, the spirit of the Lord shall lift up a standard against him, and of course, we know that word standard there typically means a battle flag, but in this case, if we'll get into the Hebrew, I like the NLT, verse 19,.

It says when the enemy shall come in like a flood, he will come like a raging flood tide driven by the breath of the Lord.

I like to put it this way.

I mean, when the enemy comes in like a flood, god shows up like a tsunami, praise God.

So we're talking about 2022, lifting up the standard and please get the media from January the second.

But during the holidays I mentioned that I was meditating, thanking God for my family, my wife and kids and grandkids, and my ministry, my church and you, and just thanking God, meditating on all that he had done in 2021 and anticipating 2022.

And the Lord put in my heart that he had been a standard to me and my family, and I thought about these verses the Lord will lift up a standard and I thought about the stabilizing effect the Lord had.

He's been with us through all kinds of persecution and betrayal and you name it.

It's, you know it's.

I wouldn't trade the will of God for anything, but yet you know we have to lean on him and he's been there for us to lean on.

So it's important for us to be so whole aboutjän.

So as I meditated on these verses after that, I saw some similarities from past visitations and I guess one of the biggest ones that I remember is what I call the tsunami dream, and I've told it many times.

I don't think I need to repeat it here, but that tsunami dream came to me just three months ahead of 9-11.

It was in June of 2001.

That dream came and I saw this tsunami headed for me on the beach and I was afraid of it, thought I was going to be killed by it, and in the dream I wrote it all the way it thrust me forward with power, and I thought about the evangelist from the turn of the century who said the same wave that brings glory is going to bring destruction.

And so that's really kind of the wave, or the flood tide driven by the breath of the Lord, that Isaiah is talking about.

You know, we're living in a time where evil we just got through praying over a man, scott Henry.

We just prayed over him tonight because evil has attacked not only him but his family.

What do his children have to do with anything he's done?

That's not right.

I really hope that the law enforcement will look into the people that have done this.

I don't know if they're reporters or if they're activists or who they are, but if they confronted a child off the school bus where I heard it, if that's true, they ought to be arrested.

I mean, this is outrageous.

But this is see, this whole thing that we read here tonight was a state of Israel, when, you know, the prophet was prophesying the coming of the Messiah.

700, and some odd years later, he prophesied the coming of the Messiah.

He said this evil is so bad the Messiah himself is going to come, and said it right, which he did.

And so now we have a similar situation.

Evil is sweeping over our nation, but guess what?

The church is here.

The church is here to lift up a standard and to bring a tsunami of righteousness.

And so let's not, let's not lose sight, let's not get overtaken by the evil part and get all discouraged about what they're doing, but let's get excited about what God is doing through the church.

This is a great opportunity for the church to shine.

The darker it gets in the world, the brighter the light will be for the church.

So I thought, I thought of this tsunami dream, how I turned from terror and fright to the most exhilarated feeling that I ever had.

I mean, I felt such power.

I was riding on top of that tsunami, like like a surfer would ride on the top of a wave, except this thing was 50 foot tall and it was driving me forward and and nothing could stand before me.

And that's the kind of power that the church has.

And we have to realize that, no matter what it looks like, god is working like that, sometimes behind the scenes, but eventually we're going to see it break out and it's going to become manifest.

Everybody say the word manifest, see, I that's.

I'm believing that we're going to see more manifestations of God's power and God's righteousness in 2022.

And the spirit of lawlessness is going to start to take some licks.

You listening to me?

I'm telling you the spirit of lawlessness is going to start getting knocked back.

It already is happening.

It's already happening.

So let's not, let's not, get discouraged, let's not allow ourselves to get under the gun, so to speak, but let's, let's stay on top of the tsunami, amen.

And so, here in this dream, I didn't know what God was trying to tell me.

I didn't know exactly what it meant.

I did know that John G Lake I couldn't think of the man's name, but John G Lake is the one that said that that the same way that brings the glory is going to bring destruction.

And what a revelation that is.

But that's true in all the Bible.

I mean, the more and that's what it's talking about right here is a tsunami of righteousness overtakes and smacks and smashes that flood of wickedness.

And so this tsunami dream occurred just three months before 9-11.

And when 9-11 happened, I didn't recall the tsunami dream right away.

In fact, I kind of felt left out.

I kind of felt like something had happened and I didn't have a warning, I didn't know it was coming.

Well, I did have a warning and I didn't know it was coming.

I just didn't know how to you know?

You don't know what you don't know.

I'd never lived through anything quite like that.

We're living through things right now that we've never lived through before.

I'm not saying it's the worst it's ever been, I'm not saying it's different or whatever, but this generation, we're seeing some things we've never seen and we can stand around and be amazed at that, or we can be energized by the Spirit of God and realize that we're.

Part of the reason we're here is we've got a moment where we can shine for Jesus.

We can make a real difference.

Do you think we're going to change everything?

No, I don't say that we're going to change society or change everything, but we're going to get a harvest out of it.

That's what we're going to do.

We're going to get a harvest out of it because I know people are fed up with lawlessness.

They're fed up with murder and crime and mayhem and the kind of craziness that's going on right now.

They do not like it and I believe that this is going to get it's going to get slapped back in a very dramatic fashion.

So let's not be surprised or amazed, let's just, let's just be thanking God ahead of time, before we see any evidence of it.

So, looking back on what God had shown me and I didn't realize what it was at the time and then, right at the same time of the tsunami dream, I had this visitation one day on my patio.

God began to speak to me and I saw my, I saw my mantle and I saw my platform of authority.

And I won't get into all of that real detail, but that day I just I started.

I was praying much in other tongues and I just started getting words advancement, advancement, you know.

And then I started thinking about advancement, meditating on the Word.

And then then I got promotion, you know, and I started meditating on that Word.

God, you know, promotion comes not from the south, the east to west, but God, as a judge, he puts down one, sets up another.

And then the next Word I got was enlargement, advancement, promotion and enlargement.

Then I got Isaiah 54, you know, start making room for bigger.

He said you're about to break forth on the right hand and on the left and your, your borders of your tent, you know, make room for more.

And I got to meditating.

You know you can't.

You can't make a tent bigger in size and footprint without raising the center pole.

Why?

Because if you do, the water is going to fall on the tent and it's either going to fall in from the weight of the water or it's going to leak through.

So you've got to have a certain amount of height to the middle of the tent in order to break out on the on each side.

And so that speaks of promotion.

So you can't get enlarged without having promotion.

So promotion was part of it.

So it was all tied together and I and you know I wasn't understanding what God was saying.

But you know, looking back on it now, god was getting us ready for 9-11.

And in the tragedy of 9-11, because we stood for right, you know, our land miracle happened during 9-11.

An unsafe businessman made a whole lot of money when everybody else was selling stock, he was, you know, he was shorting stock and he made a bunch of money and as a result, the church was gifted an 85-acre piece of property and a $600,000 debt was forgiven.

Anybody remember that land miracle?

So that came.

See, that was all as a result of this, of the standard that when the evil came.

When evil came, god lifted up a standard against it.

And that's what he was telling me over the holidays when I was meditating on this wonderful idea of a standard, him being a standard to us.

It wasn't just, he was our support, it was, he was our violent champion by our side.

I mean, when people mess with us, they mess with God.

I mean, when they mess with him, I mean you just don't mess with a whirlwind, and that's who we have on our side.

Come on, lift your hands right now.

Thank God, jesus, the standard is right by our side.

He's a raging flood tide that's being raised up against all this evil and lawlessness.

So, going back to 2001,.

Gladys and I, as you probably remember, we've given this testimony many times.

But on that morning, when the Twin Towers fell, we were on our way to Channel 14, which was the TBN affiliate at the time.

They're now closed, but at that time we were hosting the local praise of Lord program.

And guess what?

We had a prayer meeting.

It's probably the first prayer meeting in the whole city dedicated to praying that day.

And what did we do on that program?

I had everybody kneel down and repent of the sin of this nation.

I humbled ourselves on behalf of the nation and asked God to forgive the sin.

What did the nation as a whole do?

Well, our politicians, including George W Bush.

They started making some crazy statements like Islam is a religion of love, we're all children of the same God, he started building up Islam.

Oh, I was so angry, I couldn't stand it, and this was not the message that needed to be given out.

I mean, what we need is that this is a Christian nation, not an Islamic nation, and that we're not all children of the same God and we need to repent of our sin.

What sin is it?

Well, abortion is one, mis-treatment of Israel is another.

Those two things right there will sink your ship, and so that's what we repented of.

That morning, on the set at TBN here in Houston, gladys and I led the prayer.

We were bold and, thank God, we had some people that kind of caught on to it.

I think it kind of surprised them that that's what we did.

They weren't used to that kind of prayer.

That's what regional centers do?

They take over the leadership and they begin to represent more than just their little me, my four and no more.

And so after that, I found almost no one had our perspective on 9-11.

And the politicians all said, oh, we're going to build back bigger, we're going to build back stronger.

And they did.

They built the One World Trade Center.

That's what it's called, the official name, the One World Trade Center.

That's what it's called.

That's what they built back Taller, bigger, more glamorous looking than the twin.

You know, the twin tires were tall but they were ugly buildings.

I mean, they really were ugly building.

But you know I'm not be watching.

In fact I was watching Home Alone 2, christmas movie a few couple of weeks ago and it's got a picture of the twin towers in it.

And you know, every time I see a picture of them in a movie or a picture or something, I just I have such a grief.

I have such a grief because I know it marked a huge decrease over this nation and this nation lost a whole lot of ground during that time.

We could have seized the high ground, we could have repented of our sin, we could have asked for God's mercy, we could have asked for God to lead us and guide us.

No, we proudly said we're going to build back greater, we're not going to let this attack steal our American spirit?

Well, we should.

I'm not talking about stealing the American spirit.

I'm talking about repenting of your sin, because God's hand came off the country long enough for those things to fall and people didn't get that message.

So so this, this all happened only two years after I wake up the church that God gave me in 1999, five weeks after Brother Osteen went to heaven, and I didn't know the the depth of the depravity of this nation.

I didn't understand how far it had fallen from God's graces.

And looking back now, 23 years over my shoulder, now I can see, I can begin to see why God gave these spectacular what I call spectacular guidance and a vision, a dream and and all of these things that he's done.

So I'm just saying that 22 is the year to lift up this standard, to release a raging flood tide of righteousness driven by the breath of the Lord.

That's our, that's our mission in 2022.

What we just prayed tonight for Scott Henry as part of that, we're releasing a flood tide for his benefit, not just for his benefit, for all of our benefits, because this these groups are anti-American, they're communist driven, they're, they're they're for the destruction of this nation as it's been founded and it's on purpose.

They want to.

They want to just completely take away the morals of our young people and they want to change the the history of this country as it was founded.

They want to mischaracterize it.

Have we done everything right in this country?

Of course not.

There've been things that are shameful.

I think everybody pretty well knows that those things are talked about.

Should we just beat ourselves over the head all the time?

How about all the good things that we've done?

We've done a lot of good in this country.

Let's not ignore those.

So we're going to release a raging flood tide of righteousness, driven by the breath of the Lord.

So I got three things righteousness in the way of right thinking on the election.

This 2022 election is critical.

That's why there's such a fight going on already.

Usually, midterms are not this contentious and getting pretty contentious, and the, the elite want to dictate to us who our candidates are.

They're coming out and they're they're releasing their, their people, that they are far and and I reject it.

I that's what the primary is for.

The primary is for the people to select the grass roots, the grass roots to select their own candidates and some of these people that are being endorsed by office holders I don't agree with and I'm not going to vote for them.

So we've got to have right thinking.

This flood tide is going to come with right thinking about the election.

We're going to vote correctly because we've got some good choices this time.

We're not going to settle for some of these choices that we've been given.

Right thinking on the issues.

Let's get clear about what the issues are, see, and there are certain things that are more important than economic factors.

Are economic factors important?

Yes, but pro-life and pro-Israel are two more important things.

More important things Say let's get our issues Right.

Thinking on the issues.

See those two pro-life and pro-Israel.

Those are the reasons the countries in judgment.

We have murdered our children, murdered them, bloods on our hands and in spite of the fact that most Americans do not favor abortion, they don't.

If it were ever put to a vote, it wouldn't pass.

That's why it's never put to a vote.

It's demagogued, you know.

They try to make you feel guilty and all that.

They have all the violent protesting.

So, listen, we've got to have right thinking on the issues and then, finally, right thinking on our actions.

We've got to have the Holy Ghost govern our actions.

We can't be.

You know we have to be firm.

You know I heard Michael Berry say this this morning and you know he said you know, one thing I've learned in all the years of politics is the politicians must be afraid of the electorate.

They have to be afraid of the voters, and I say amen to that, michael.

I mean, our job is not to be everybody's best friend.

Yeah, do we pray for them?

Yeah, but you know what, when they don't do the right thing, we need to let them know that we're not pleased.

This, right here, is going on right now.

I'm not at liberty to share some of the things that are going on right this minute that we're talking, but there are some high politicians that are just hearing what we think about their recent stands I'm talking about.

God has opened a door for us and, I believe, the church at large.

If the church would just step into it, if the church would step into its rightful role, I believe that politicians, instead of hating the voters and looking down on the voters and thinking that voters don't know anything, they would be more busy, they would be busier, being afraid of the voters and trying to court their favor.

That's the right thing to do.

They ought to be trying to court our favor.

Some of them are messed up pretty bad.

So we're fixing to come out in the public here pretty soon about who we're going to back in the 2022 election.

I'm not ready to do it just yet, but it's coming, and some of the people that think they've got it made, they don't have it made.

Amen, so that's all I can say.

I keep being reminded of Esther.

It's for such a time as this who knows that you've been brought to this point?

For such a time as this.

That's what Mordecai told Esther, and I keep thinking of the destiny of me and my family.

My wife and I and my family.

We started this church and now you.

This is such a divine association that we have together and it's for such a time as this.

Just think of Esther had not been in charge, had not been in favor with the King, if she had not been willing to lay her life on the line and take a risk that could possibly have killed her, the Jewish people could have been exterminated way back then.

They were on the hook.

They were on, I mean, all of the.

The King was against them.

All the people were against them.

They had planned on who they were going to kill.

All over the kingdom, 122 provinces.

And so it was a miracle of deliverance.

Listen, god, you know it doesn't take a whole army of people to get God to bring in deliverance for our nation again.

He hadn't lost the, he hadn't lost that recipe.

And you know, the spirit of Haman is still here.

He hates Jews, he hates Christians.

He's trying to kill both.

But you know what?

Let's be governed by the Word and the spirit, and we're going to turn back the plans of the unrighteous and hit this earth with a tsunami of righteousness.

Amen, let's lift our hands and receive the Word of God.

Be encouraged tonight.

Father, we thank you that you've chosen us to live now and we see the big picture.

We're not about to cow, we're not about to bow, we're not about to back up, but we're going to pursue and recover.

All in Jesus' name, amen.