Being Covenant Minded

And let's just wave our Bibles around, make Jesus glad.

What an atmosphere.

Glory to God.

One of these days we're just gonna get snatched off the face of the earth, taking up.

I don't think it'll be today, but it could be.

Let's wave those Bibles around, make Jesus glad.

In the devil mad.

Let's say this together say heavenly Father, there is power in the name of Jesus and I have the exclusive right, as a born again Christian, in covenant with Almighty God, to use that mighty name.

It's one of the weapons of my warfare, along with the Holy Ghost and the Word of God.

I thank you for that mighty name.

I'll never forget how powerful it is.

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

Let's turn in our Bibles to the first Samuel, chapter 30.

1 Samuel 30 · chapter mention

And while you're looking up some verses, why don't you look up first Corinthians, chapter 10.

1 Corinthians 10 · chapter mention

?

And I want to, since it's communion Sunday.

You know the Bible says Jesus said as often as you do this, do this in remembrance of me.

Who is Jesus?

He's the Word.

Covenants are made out of words, and so I just want to preach a message about being covenant minded.

I mean, that's what communion is all about is reminding us and reminding our thinking.

Sometimes we forget All right.

First Samuel, chapter 30,.

1 Samuel 30 · chapter mention

This is David In verse one.

It came to pass when David and his men were come to Ziklag, on the third day that the Amalekites had invaded the south in Ziklag and smitten Ziklag and burned it with fire and had taken the women captive that were therein.

They slew, not any, either great or small, but carried them away and went on their way.

So David and his men came to the city and, behold, it was burned with fire.

And then the wives and their sons and their daughters were taken captive.

And then David and the people that were with him lifted up their voice and wept until they had no more power to weep and David's two wives were taken captive.

So Hinoem, the Jeseralites, and Abigail, the wife of Nabal the Carmelite.

And David was greatly distressed because the people spoke of stoning him, because the soul of all the people were grieved, every man for his sons and for his daughters.

But everybody shout.

But David encouraged himself in the Lord, his God.

And David said to Abithor the priest, the Himalek son, I pray that you bring me hither the Ephod.

And Abithor brought thither the Ephod to David and David inquired at the Lord, saying shall I pursue after this troop, shall I overtake them?

And he answered him pursue, for thou shalt surely overtake them and, without fail, recover all Hallelujah, all right.

And then let's look at 1 Corinthians, chapter 10, in verse 11.

1 Corinthians 10 · chapter mention

Now, all these things, what things?

The things that are written in the Old Testament.

You know, what we just read is written for a purpose.

Now, all these things were happened under them, for examples.

And they are written for our admonition, our warning upon whom the ends of the age have come.

And that was written 2,000 years ago, more or less.

And just think about how close we are to the end of the age.

What age?

The church age.

The church age is nearing its completion.

This age is when whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.

But there's coming another age where that's not gonna be.

So.

In order for people to get saved, they're gonna have to refuse the mark of the beast and die a horrible death.

That's the only way they're gonna go to heaven.

And so you know it's pressing upon us to get the harvest.

While it's relatively easy, I know there's gonna be a lot of people say, oh, there's gonna be millions of tribulation.

Saints, yeah, but they won't be part of the body of Christ, they will not rule and reign forever, they will not be in the status that we're in.

I mean it's time that we understand our responsibility.

To whom much is given, much is required, amen.

So you know, being covenant minded Everybody say covenant minded I mean we can be worldly minded, we can be trouble minded, we can be all of these kinds of minds in us, you know, but we need to have our minds refreshed and renewed with the word of God and specifically about our covenant.

So here, david is a type of Jesus.

What do we mean by that?

Well, in the old covenant they were types and shadows.

So I like to say it this way the old covenant is the shadow and the new covenant is the substance.

We've got the substance of the things that were foreshadowed.

So David was a foreshadowing of the believer, or of Jesus, if you will, and he was a covenant minded man and he exercised covenant fundamentals in the time of maximum pressure.

Think about it.

Think about him coming to his city where he had left his dear wives and children and it doesn't say so, but all of his wealth was there.

I mean, you know, he didn't take the wealth with him out to the battlefield.

Neither did all the mighty men, 600 men that were with him.

They didn't take their wealth.

So there was a whole lot of wealth that they lost, along with the treasure of their families, and so this is maximum pressure, when he's face to face with the personal loss and then the corporate loss.

But he's responsible, which is why they wanted to stone him.

You know I was stoned, your leaders, you know I might want to throw a few rocks at Biden today, but anyways, not my leader, but anyway I didn't vote for him.

You know there's two nations here.

There's an America that we all know and love, and then there's American Marxism.

There's two nations here and there's no reconciling them.

You might as well forget unity.

There's no unity.

We have to defeat the other side.

Anyway, that's neither here nor there.

Praise the Lord.

So we had personal loss, he had corporate loss, and then he had the idea that said he was greatly distressed because they were gonna stone him.

And so you know, the Amalekites had come through.

You could say the Taliban had come through.

You could say ISIS had come through.

You could say Al-Qaeda.

It's the same people, folks, and Saul King.

Saul lost his kingdom because he didn't take care of the Amalekites.

God said I want every one of them, I don't want any left to breathe.

We need to get our mind on the real God and not this religious God that people have the mind of.

Well, you know he left the well.

He loves them, he died for them, but he's through with them.

He's through with them.

They've denied him.

You know you come.

You know you fill a cup with sin.

You fill a cup with denying God.

Probably the worst sin of all of anything in the whole world is idolatry.

God doesn't have any patience with idolatry.

What has our country done?

Well, we've imported a bunch of idolatrous and it's leavened our country and we have been weakened.

The church has just shrunk back.

He said, oh okay, well, they have a freedom of religion.

Well, that wasn't what the founders thought about when they formed this country.

They weren't trying to populate all the idolatry in the world, they were trying to lift up Christianity.

I better get back on my message.

Praise the Lord.

And so here he's, a covenant man.

David is a covenant man, but the Bible says in Hebrews 8.6 that we've got a better covenant, found upon better promises, so that when we come across trouble and loss.

It looks like loss, it looks like trouble.

But you know what, if we'll get down to the covenant fundamentals, we can overcome and we can overtake and we can recover.

All Are you with me?

I mean, there's nothing settled that the devil does.

We can always get back what he tries to steal Amen.

So we have to make decisions based on the word and the spirit, or we could say our covenant and not on emotion.

If there's anything I've noticed in 33 years of ministry, 27 years of full-time pastoring, is that most people just don't.

We've taught on following the Holy Ghost, but most people follow emotions.

It's just up and down.

Whatever their emotions tell them, that's what they do.

Whatever their gladness is, they'll make a decision with her because they're glad.

They'll make a decision when they're mad, they'll make a decision when they're sad.

And all of them.

That's wrong.

And so we see the pattern here of how David overcame his emotion.

Did he give in to him for a little bit?

Yeah, sometimes we do.

We give into a little emotion.

We let ourselves have a pity party.

Limit your pity party to no more than 10 seconds.

Give yourself 10 seconds and after that buck up.

Amen, we're in the army.

Now we're in the army.

All right, covenant fundamentals, be strong in your fundamentals.

I'm just gonna teach you the fundamentals today.

It's gonna sound so oh, he's gonna say that again.

You know, I'm thinking about Vince Lombardi.

He took over the Green Bay Packers back in the 50s I think it was 58 or nine.

They were a losing pro football team I mean they hadn't won in years, decades I think.

And he took them over as coach and he said gentlemen, this is a football.

Started, when you talk about fundamentals, this is a football.

And he taught them about blocking and tackling.

I mean they had forgotten how to do that.

You can't win a football game with fancy plays.

You can't win a football game with athletes alone.

You've got to have the fundamentals, you've got to have blocking and you've got to have tackling.

Gotta have the fundamentals.

So I've got these four things that I gleaned from here in First Samuel that David did to help you when you face trouble.

I mean Jesus said in the world you shall have Tribulation, trouble, anguish, anguish.

I mean, have you ever just kind of bit down on your knuckle?

You know, ah, something hits and it hurts.

You know we all go through those things.

It's not what we go through.

It's how we go through.

Are we gonna stay there and camp out in pity, self pity, or are we gonna rise up and exercise our covenant fundamentals?

So the first one that I want to talk about is found in verse six, that David encouraged himself and the Lord, his God.

He didn't wait, for there wasn't anybody else to do it.

He couldn't say, hey, you know, joe Ab, how about encouraging me, mother?

I need a little help here.

He couldn't go to his mighty men.

David had mighty men.

I mean, they could sling the stone with either hand.

They could shoot an arrow with either bow and arrow with either hand.

I mean, they were mean motor scooters and they were just down.

They were weeping and crying over their families that were gone.

They didn't know if their families were still alive.

They had no idea of knowing whether they were even alive or not.

And so, yeah, you can see.

But then they started turning on David.

It's all your fault.

So he couldn't go anywhere.

He had to go and encourage himself.

You know, you have the ability to encourage yourself.

And how do you do that?

Well, you can't wait till trouble comes.

You've got to stay encouraged, and that means you need to read your Bible every day.

Oh, here he goes again.

Well, when you start doing it, I quit preaching it Because I know you're not.

You're not going to get it, because we get requests all the time and I'm glad we're here to hear your requests.

Agree with you in prayer.

But sometimes what the report that we get is somebody that hadn't read their Bible very much, they hadn't come to church very much, they're so low on their encouragement meter that we've got to kind of fill in the gap, and they shouldn't be that way.

You might call the church and get agreement, but you ought to have a good confession.

You ought to be filled with encouragement on a daily basis, reading your Bible and confessing the Word.

There's no substitute, there's no strawberry shortcuts.

Amen, hallelujah.

Psalm 119, 130 says you know, the entrance of thy Word giveeth light and it gives understanding to the simple.

When you read your Bible on a daily basis, when trouble happens, you probably have just read some verses that apply and the Holy Ghost can say remember that verse.

And now you've got a rainbow word to throw at the devil, you've got the sword of the Spirit that stick him.

Glory to God.

It's your only offensive weapon.

The Word of God and coming out of your mouth.

That's the only can other people pray for you?

Yeah, but that's not God's best.

God's best is for you to encourage yourself.

God's best is for you to stay prepared.

Glory to God.

Talk about fundamentals.

Talking about fundamentals I mean after you've been beat on the football field 77 to nothing and couldn't, didn't make a tackle the whole time.

You should have had some tackling drills.

You should have had some drills on how to recover a fumble.

You should have had some basics.

I remember getting on the blocking sled.

I was a guard, believe it or not, 140 pounds playing football.

I mean, that's not exactly a guard.

In the NFL is 340 pounds.

I was 140 pounds.

I mean it's kind of like.

And when we had this sled and it had spring-loaded pads and you would get down in your three-point stance and you would fire out and give it a four-arm shiver, which is this in my case.

I'm right-handed but sometimes it depended, I've used both arms but you would pop that spring-loaded pad and drive it forward and the coach is standing on it and there's five guys pushing that sled.

If we're not pushing fast enough, he doesn't let us up, he makes us push it 100 yards.

Well, our arm and just churning our legs.

Are you with me?

If you're with me and you're pushing enough in practice, you'll do it out on the football field.

Then you won't get beat.

77-and-nothing amen.

Everybody say I'm encouraging myself, I'm reading my Bible every day.

I heard somebody say I just don't have time, pastor, I get up.

I have to get up at 5.30,.

We'll get up at 4.30.

See, when I was building homes, when I got to say that I was a home builder and my day started at daylight because I had to get up before daylight, cell phone till 1988.

By that time I'd been saved eight years.

So I had to get into the habit of getting up before daylight.

Why?

Well, because I got up before daylight to call my sub before they left their house, because I couldn't communicate with them all day long.

They didn't have cell phones, I didn't have cell phone, they're not by phone, and so if I can't get them early that morning to tell them I need them at such and such an address guess what, they may or may not be there and then I lose a whole day.

And that whole day for me in one house is a lot of money, because it's interest.

Every day, the meter's running every day, that I don't have progress on that job.

It's money out of my pocket, less profit.

Are y'all with me now?

So I got up early before daylight.

I'd call two or three subs.

I always knew the night before, okay, I'm gonna have to call them.

And it was better not to call them the night before because they got to bed early.

If I called them at nine or 10 o'clock and woke them up then they made them mad.

Then they sure not gonna show up.

So I'd grab them right before they left.

So when I got saved and started reading my mouth, I set the clock another hour earlier.

You can do it.

I left to go duck hunting one time at one o'clock in the morning.

Went to where there's now Copperfield From spring.

I mean, how stupid are you?

I mean, what is?

You know, never did kill a duck the entire duck season.

I never saw a duck the entire duck season.

It cost me $1,000 in endless amounts of sleep, not a big duck hunting, you know, I kind of gave up on ducks.

And then what do you do with it when you kill it?

Would you have to eat it?

Yeah, you ever eat a duck.

A wild duck is pretty.

Yeah, domestic duck's not bad.

A wild duck's not bad, all right.

Gladys says I always preach about food.

All right, so what about reading my Bible?

Say, I've tried to read my Bible, pastor, but I got to Leviticus and I just laid it down.

Okay, I got you.

I'm still tempted to lay it down when I get to Leviticus, but I press through.

I press through the begets and the beguots.

So here's my Bible reading plan Five Psalms and one Proverbs.

There's 150 Psalms and 30 days and a month.

So if you most months, some days, some months, there's 31.

I'll tell you about that in a minute.

So if you read on the first day today, okay, let's use today, today's the 3rd of October.

So I would read Psalm 3, 33, 63, 93, 123.

You spread it out in the book of Psalms and you will be amazed at how the Psalms many times fit together.

They'll repeat each other.

And that's your clue to pray.

That I always, I always read my Bible, you know, and pray at the same time.

It's not a laborious thing, it's not a bunch of asking and give me, give me, give me, it's praying, his word, it's praise.

You know praise is prayer.

All right.

So then Proverbs once you read.

You read the book of Psalms every month, the book of Proverbs every month, and then, when there's 31 days, I'll skip on the 29th day of the month.

On the 29th day of that month I should be reading what 29, 59, 89, 119, and 149,.

Well, 119 is the 176 verses.

So on a month with 31 days and my personal, what I do to make it kind of a little easier to do is that I just don't read Psalm 119 on the 29th day, I save it for the 31st day and I read it by itself, and I still have fulfilled my Bible reading plan.

Why do you have to have a plan?

Because without a plan you're not gonna accomplish anything.

What am I trying to accomplish?

I wanna accomplish reading Psalms and Proverbs once a month, all of it.

Then I read two in the old chapters, two chapters in the new.

Well, the Old Testament's bigger than the New Testament.

So if I do that, I read the Old Testament through in about one year and I read the New Testament through three times in that same year.

That's the proper balance.

I've seen people get too bottom heavy.

They just all they do is read Old Testament, old Testament, jeremiah, isaiah.

Well, you know they have their place.

But if that's all you read, you are ignoring what has been specifically written to us, and that's the epistles.

Even the gospels are not written to us.

They were written to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.

Therefore, we can imitate Jesus.

We need to know how Jesus operated on the earth.

It's very valuable to read the gospels, but you need to meditate in the epistles, because those are specifically given to the church.

Are y'all with me now?

I'm talking about fundamentals, covenant fundamentals, that if you will do these things, you will not fall apart when things happen.

All right.

The second thing, fundamental is pray.

You know, jesus said in Luke 18, one man ought always to pray and not to faint, not to lose heart, not to give up.

Smith Wigglesworth said in his experience with Christians most Christians give up before the answer shows up.

And then it was on the way and they gave up.

So it never shows up.

No, we've got to keep going to the end.

What gives us that strength?

We have prayer.

Prayer is again.

It's not a litany of I wanna, I wanna give me, give me, give me.

It's communication with Almighty God and we're in covenant with Him.

Praise God.

It praises prayer.

Worship is prayer.

John 16, 23 and 24,.

Jesus told the disciples.

He said here to vor, you've asked nothing in my name.

See, he was changing the way they were praying, the way they were gonna approach prayer, because up till then all they did was ask Jesus, jesus, give me this Jesus.

What about this Jesus?

He said here to vor you've not asked the Father anything in my name.

Pray to the Father in my name, that your joy may be full.

Let's read it.

Let's just turn over John 16.

I didn't quote it exactly right, so let's get it.

Verse 23.

In that day, you shall ask me nothing Verily, fairly.

I say unto you what day is he talking about?

You know, after he leaves the earth in the church age.

He's talking about the church age.

Jesus is no longer on the earth.

Who is the Holy Ghost?

And he lives in us.

He's not just with us.

All right, so here are two.

You've asked nothing In that day.

You shall ask me nothing Verily, very last Sunday whatsoever, you shall ask the Father in my name.

He will give it you.

So, heather, two, have you asked nothing in my name?

Ask and you shall receive.

Notice what it said.

Ask and you shall receive.

Is there any doubt about that?

Ask and you shall receive.

I still see people posting on my Facebook page.

Well, you know, sometimes the answer is no.

Well then, you didn't ask according to your covenant, you didn't ask according to the Holy Ghost.

That's the only way it's known.

That's the only time it's known is when we're presumptuous and we ask the stun in the moon and the stars when we don't have any faith for it.

Not part of the covenant.

Are you with me now?

In fact, james said it this way.

He said you have not because you ask not.

Or else you ask and receive not because you ask a miss that you may consume it upon your own lusts or your own desires.

A lot of times our motives are bad when we pray like a baby Christian.

We know God has mercy on babies, but at some point in time we have to grow up and have an adult prayer life.

This is what is a basic of our covenant Praise God.

We're going to have communion in a moment and I wanted you to have these in your thinking when we're receiving the elements, because that's exactly what we need to do.

I mean, it's wonderful to receive communion, but if we're not reminded of our covenant when the rubber meets the robe, we haven't done much.

I know people that receive communion every day.

Well, that's great.

Are you making decisions then based on that covenant, or are you just going through a religious exercise?

I went to communion all my life in the Catholic Church.

We had communion every time.

We went to church, and my mother made me go Wednesday nights.

So I went twice a week, and then, when I served mass, I went seven days a week because I was serving the mass during the morning.

You know, the priest has to say a mass every day and I had to be there to serve it.

So there'd be times at least twice a month.

I would go to go to mass seven times.

So I'd have communion seven times.

Did it do me any good?

No, it didn't do me any good Cause I was not.

I was lost as a goose.

I didn't know I was lost.

Yeah, a lot of people don't know they're lost.

That's our job Tell them how to get saved.

All right, so pray.

It's a dialogue, not a monologue.

God has already talked to you right here.

You don't have to hear a voice.

You don't have to, you know, wait for a dream or a vision, you have his thoughts towards you right here when you read them and when you pray, the word oh, I tell you, god shows you things out of his word that will help you overcome, and not overcome but recover all.

Everybody say I'm recovering all.

The devil has stolen from that.

Yeah, he stole a few things.

We're going to recover every bit of it Plus All right.

The third one I see here in verse what about pray?

It doesn't say he prayed.

Well, he did.

He asked God, shall I recover all?

He asked the priest to bring the E-Fod.

More about the E-Fod the E-Fod had stones on it and nobody knows exactly how it works Oomim and thumim, that's.

You know, that's what it's called and it would you know.

Some scholars say that the stones would be held up to light and they would glow certain colors.

And it would.

God would communicate to the priest, the prophet and the king.

Only they all, that's the only people, had the Holy Ghost.

They had the Holy Ghost upon them.

You know, david was anointed king, so the Holy Ghost was upon him, even though he really wasn't king yet.

The priest had a by-athor.

He had the Holy Ghost upon him.

There was no prophet, and so when he brought that Ephod, that's a symbol of prayer, to hear from God, to know what God wants.

That's why we pray amen, all right.

The third one is very similar.

The third being covenant minded.

Basic precept is number three go to church.

Well, I'm in church, I know, but a lot of people aren't, and I thank God for live stream.

We have members of our church that, absolutely because of circumstances, they're fighting illnesses, they're fighting physical things.

Sometimes people get on work schedules.

We live in a city that's a 24 seven city and sometimes people get on shifts that it's not possible for them to come to church.

And so we understand that and I thank God for live stream for a stop gap, but that's all it is.

It's just a temporary.

Anybody that's depending on live stream as part of church and they're not believing to change their schedule, they're not believing to get healed enough to get to church, well then you're out.

This is not a substitute, it's just a little temporary thing.

Is what it is.

It's not designed to be a substitute for what we have right here, and I think most of our members know that and they're all believing God for breakthrough in that area.

Amen.

That's why we didn't stay closed.

We saw the value of the corporate anointing Amen.

And so where did he go to church?

Well, he brought the priest.

He said, bring me here the EFOD.

And so they had church.

Should I go?

There's a lot of things you're praying about.

You hadn't heard yet from God on that when you come to church.

When I came into the sanctuary of God then I understood Psalm 78, 73, 17, rather Psalm 73, 17.

That's one of my favorite verses.

When I came into the sanctuary of God then I understood why is that?

Because God wants you connected to a body.

He doesn't want a lone ranger.

He doesn't want somebody out there fighting by themselves, unconnected.

He wants you joined together.

He's the head.

Jesus is the head of a body, not just one cell.

Are you with me now?

Hebrews 10, 35,.

Neglect not the assemblies of yourself together, as the manner of some is.

Forsake not the assembly as puzzle pieces.

One verse says that's the sense of that verse.

We're all puzzle pieces.

When you're missing, the puzzle's not complete.

You ever have one of these thousand piece puzzles.

It fills up the whole coffee table, the whole dining room table, and somebody lost one of the pieces and it's sitting there with a big old hole in the middle of it.

I mean, you've worked on it for about 18 hours and you get to the end of it and you're looking and looking and looking and finally you've loosed up all the pieces but there's one missing.

Oh my God, oh, what a waste of time that was.

I wish I'd have known I was missing a piece.

Oh, that's what happens when we're not here.

You're important, I said.

You're important to the body of Christ.

You wouldn't have been born again and you wouldn't have been filled with a Holy Ghost.

I just loved how many people came up here and got filled with a Holy Ghost last Sunday.

Didn't y'all love all those new members coming into the church?

Wasn't that a powerful last week?

Yes, well, this is some of the things that they need to hear and all of us need to hear and be reminded of.

Go to church.

That's why I say give me a year of your life.

Brother Osteen used to say that I gave him 15.

I actually gave him more than that because we stayed connected after I started my church.

I would call him on a regular base, not enough to bother him, but he let me know.

I want to hear from you, so I, about every couple of months I'd give him a ring and he always answered his phone and we'd have a nice chat.

I was connected to him.

And so why?

Well, you know you just, you need a pastor to take you from rudimentary churchianity and get you grown up into mature, developed Christianity.

There's a huge difference.

So many people are infected with churchianity, religion, dead religion, right, yeah, and you need at real relationship, and that's what the body of Christ is designed to give you.

All right, everybody say covenant.

All right, then the last one we didn't read.

We'll go back to 1 Samuel 30.

And let's read this last verse, verse nine.

So they, david, went, he and the 600 men that were with him, and came to the Brook Bezor and where there were left and were, those that were left behind, stayed.

So 200 men were just too tired to go to the battle David pursued.

He and the 400 men for 200 abode behind were so tired, faint, they could not go over the Brook Bezor.

Some of us in church are going through battles and we're not able to keep up with the rest of us.

What do we do?

Just leave them behind?

No, we stay connected, we encourage them.

When one hurts, we all hurt when one cries.

We all cry when one has a victory.

We all rejoice in the victory when one gains a million dollars in the lottery.

We all gained a million.

No, we didn't, but we rejoice like we did.

Amen, and find out there's a better way to get a million dollars in the lottery, all right, and so anyway, it goes on down in those 400,.

When they got back with all the spoils of the battle, they brought back the women and the children and all the wealth that had been stolen, plus all the Malachite's wealth, brought it all back.

Then the 400 said ah, we're not gonna part with those guys that didn't go to the battle.

We're only gonna give them their wives and kids back.

We're gonna keep everything else.

That means they were gonna keep their wealth, they had wealth and they're gonna keep their wealth.

What are you creating of 200 homeless people, 200 people that don't have anything left now except just their families and the obligation of feeding those families?

You're gonna.

You know Davis says no, it won't be so, it's not so.

We're gonna part alike.

See, that's what the church is all about.

The church is all about parting alike.

The church is all about receiving our inheritances and we're all on the same team.

We're not competing with one another.

We're not trying to run a race against each other.

Amen.

This is the place where God can bless a whole congregation for being part.

I've always.

I mean all the things that God has allowed me to do.

I think about the places I've been, the gospel I've preached all over the world.

You all have a part in it.

I mean, if, whatever reward I get, you get part of it, and whatever reward you get, I get part of it.

Glory to God.

Come on, lift your hands right now.

Thank God.

We, everybody, say we part alike.

All right, all right.

So the last one has come into relationship with others in the church.

See, it's not, it's not a, it's not.

The kingdom of God is not just a vertical you and God, it's a horizontal, with you and the temple of the living God.

Look to both sides of you.

See, both sides, those are temples of the living God.

So you have just as much need to connect with them as you do when now look up.

You have just as much need to connect horizontally as vertically.

Amen.

This is what's missing, I think, in the church of Jesus Christ in 21st century.

This is why the church is weak.

This is why the church is not accomplished it's purpose yet.

But God has an answer for it.

Amen.

And the answer is for us to all be covenant minded.

Come on, lift your hands and receive the word today.

Praise God, hallelujah, everybody say more and more as every day goes by.

I'm a person of my covenant.

I'm persuaded of the word of God.

When trouble happens, I know where to find the answer.

Hallelujah, glory to God.

Thank you, jesus.