Being Increased Minded

Pick your bibles up, wave them around.

I'm kind of half drunk already, maybe I can preach through it.

Just wave our bibles around, make Jesus glad, the devil mad.

Let's say this together say heavenly Father, I'm here on Sunday night because I'm hungry and thirsty for the truth, the truth of the Word of God, and the Holy Spirit is the arbiter of truth, the spirit of truth, and so tonight I thank you that I received truth that will change my life.

In Jesus' name, amen, that's what the Word will do.

It'll change your life.

Let's turn our bibles to Isaiah 54.

I thought James is gonna preach my message and he could.

He certainly could.

My message is entitled being increased minded.

Isaiah 54, verse one Sing O barren.

Thou that did not bear, break forth into singing and cry aloud, thou that did not travail with child For more the children of the desolate than the children of the married wife.

Saith the Lord and large the place of your tent and let them stretch forth.

The curtains of thy inhabitations spare not, scant not, but lengthen thy cords and strengthen thy stakes, for thou shalt break forth on the right hand and on the left, and thy seed shall inherit the Gentiles and make the desolate cities to be inhabited.

Fear not, for thou shalt not be ashamed.

Neither be thou confounded, for thou shalt not be put to shame, for thou shalt not be put to, for thou shalt forget the shame of thy youth.

I got all those shames there.

You shall forget the shame of your youth and shall not remember the reproach of your widowhood any longer, for thy maker is thine husband.

The Lord of hosts is his name, and the redeemer of the Holy one of Israel, the God of the whole earth.

Shall he be called so, being increased minded.

You know God has big plans.

He's a great, big God, little bitty devil.

You know, right now the devil's made a lot of noise.

Devil's people are making a lot of noise.

They have all the media.

They have the Hollywood crowd.

They have, you know, they have a lot of government, non-elected government officials by and large as hardly any that are speaking up.

They wanna make retirement.

But listen, god is not falling off the throne.

God has big plans and he has a history of making great from small, many from few, strong from weak, free from bound Amen.

And he's saying to the barons in the Bible a woman that was barren, that was, they blamed God.

They almost always say, you know God dried up her womb.

No, god didn't do it.

Well, it says that in the Bible.

I know they didn't have any revelation of the devil and the Bible is based on progressive revelation increasing.

So by the time you get to the New Testament, they figured that out, that God is not the author of the death and destruction.

He's not the one that dries up women's womb.

So you know, like you know, sarah just knew that God had done that to her.

Hannah thought that God had done that to her.

She was in, you know, samson's mother, and so forth and so on.

So they've got all these things in the Bible.

If you're just gonna read the Bible, just skip along the top of the pages.

You'll get misguided.

God is not the author of evil, and so he's saying this to Israel.

He said I can make barren women have more children than the married wife, you know.

And so it's time to sing and shout is what he's saying.

You know, quit worrying about whether things are not working out the way that you thought, and they start singing and shouting because God is about to move in on the scene.

You're gonna be more fruitful than those that you think have it made.

You know, maybe you're looking at brother and sister blow.

You know, joe and Flo blow and maybe they've got it.

Seemed like they got it wired.

It seemed like they've got it together.

They got a new car and they got a new house, they got new clothes, they got turquoise shoes and it just looks like they've got it all together.

But listen, I'm telling you right now.

You know, shout and sing and rejoice.

Amen.

He's saying, be increased minded.

That's what James was talking about, the import of what he was saying.

Let's be ready for more this.

These verses were prophesied the night that I had the word about the greatest year yet, back in September of 2019.

And I don't know, it took about 30 minutes for me to get that word out.

And then Justin Bedford stood up and he had a word and I almost didn't take it because, you know, the prophets ministry was in manifestation.

I usually don't take a prophecy from the floor if that ministry is going on, but the Holy ghost said take it.

And so I took it, and so he prophesied Isaiah 54.

And so that was part of our greatest year yet.

In other words, make room for more.

You know you're gonna break forth on the right hand and on the left.

You know, one of the words that we had is God's gonna increase our footprint, like James was talking about, he's increasing our footprint.

Well, that's happened.

Footprint of this church is a lot bigger than it ever has been in the past, since 2019.

It happened all since 2019.

And so he's saying be increased, minded not just for the church, it's for the members of the church, it's for you personally.

Make room for more.

I mean, if you watch the news, you're gonna be making room for less.

You're gonna be drawing in, you're gonna be pulling in, you're gonna close yourself off from what God wants to do.

I say this from time to time, but we have new people come in, but you're sitting in a building and the birthplace of this building was during 9-11, when God's hand came off of our nation and allowed.

Why would he do that?

Because we had departed from him.

I said we've departed from him as a nation.

He has a covenant with America, the nation, and you know, when people quit blessing God, they wanted God to bless America, but they quit blessing God, they quit taking God out of the public square.

They restrict the church from saying what it needs to say.

They promote all kinds of filth and perversion as a matter of course.

And so they mistreat Israel.

And so 9-11 was God taking his hand off to let us know look, you wanna get me out of you?

Really, you better do it.

You better think again.

And after 9-11, there was no repentance.

I mean, how many of you remember the stock market fell After 9-11.

People were unemployed after 9-11.

And after 9-11, a businessman that we have and that was our first landlord and that we bought our first property down the street from, he made $20 million shorting the stock market and needed a tax write-off and he donated a $9.7 million piece of property to this ministry, amen.

So I mean, let's make room.

You know, god's not intimidated by the economy, god's not listen.

We're not on this world's economy, we're on God's economy.

Make room for more is what he's saying.

This prophecy you get two for one.

First of all, it's for Israel, no question about it, but it's also for the church.

The church was barren before Pentecost.

They were hiding in a room, you know, with the doors locked, the window shades drawn.

They, when they went out, they finally did encounter Jesus.

Remember in John, chapter 21, where they went fishing.

John 21 · chapter mention

Peter said I go with fishing.

I mean, you know, they weren't exactly obeying the Great Commission.

They went fishing, they had to pay some bills and here's Jesus fixing some fish tacos I know that's what it was fish taco and he's on the beach and John looks over there on the beach and says it's the Lord.

I mean, you know, they didn't recognize him again.

Every time they saw him they didn't recognize who he was.

The glory had changed him.

They just couldn't.

They couldn't get it straight, they couldn't keep, they didn't know what he looked like.

And Peter jumped in the ocean and swam to shore, and so they were behind closed doors, they were fearful.

But then Pentecost, and that same Peter that was so afraid, that same Peter that denied the Lord, he stood up in front of all those people and preached the gospel 3,000 Jewish people got saved.

Many of them are the same ones that said crucify him.

And so it's really the same.

Before every revival that the church has had, you'll find the church will have a contraction.

You'll find the church will have something close to apostasy, which is what we have right now.

We have so many false teachers.

We have so many light teachers that are just.

They're basically they're on the Bible, but they're just skimming the top and they're only preaching.

Milk, if that is mostly cardboard, has no value, has no food.

Have you ever tried living off a cardboard?

I mean it doesn't taste good and it's not nutritious.

But before every revival there's a contraction, there's a barrenness that when people realize and we do, we realize there's a barrenness they say what are we doing?

We're crying out.

We're praying for revival, we're praying to wake up the church.

We're doing things to cause that to happen.

We're stirring people up, making some people mad, frankly.

Well, fine, get mad, you can get glad the same britches you got mad in.

But listen, I'm doing what God told me to do.

He told me to wake you up, and so this applies.

Now that we're beginning to wake up, I know God's got at least one more great revival for the church and one great awakening for the world.

I have every James talked about confidence.

I have every confidence that God is the greatest farmer that ever lived.

He knows how to bring in a crop.

He is not a failure.

He's not gonna have a crop failure.

Jesus did not die in vain and that Jesus is not coming back for some weak, powerless, penny-anny bunch of ninnies hiding.

Amen, we're no.

No, it's gonna be a glorious church without spot or wrinkle he's coming back for.

And if he is, that means that harvest has gotta be paid for.

There's no way to reap a harvest without spending money, and so far we don't have the money.

But God has got a plan to get it in there.

I'm gonna go with Brother Sam and dig where he digs.

That's all right.

So be increased-minded, don't have this fatalistic.

I read, you know what We'd cross 7,000 followers on my Facebook page.

Just amazed, a sign and a wonder that people are being attracted to that Facebook page.

And you have all kind of people making posts.

And the favorite thing that people say is God is in control.

Well, if he's in control, he sure is making a mess of things.

No, he's not in control, see, it's just a lack of Bible teaching.

They've been taught wrong.

They've been taught religion and so.

But people are.

I read one where one lady said I'm just afraid of God.

I'm so afraid of his wrath.

Good Lord, where do you go to church?

I mean, my goodness, how do you get that out of the Word of God?

We have a better covenant found upon better.

God is not mad at the church.

God loves the church.

I mean, we're men.

We're supposed to love our wives as Christ loved the church, not mad at the church, amen, amen.

We're married.

We have a covenant.

God is patient with the church.

The blood is enough.

The blood cleanses the church of its sin.

Has the church fallen short?

Yes, of course.

But listen, god's not finished with the church.

Are y'all with me now?

So be increased minded.

Just three things tonight that I think will help you, because I have to preach like this from time to time because we're faced with such a contrary tide, Not only the devil and the persecution the church is going through, but then members of the church that are just misguided and they're I guess they're mad at them.

So I don't know.

It's kind of hard to read people.

Are you mad at yourself?

You're the church.

So some people are just giving up on the church.

One guy said I have that church.

Is it demonic?

No, it's not, you doofus.

The church is not demonic.

The church is the body of Christ.

I'm not talking about churches that are already dead.

You know it's hard to tell between the dead and the asleep.

That's not my job.

It's above my job description to try to figure out which church is dead and which church is asleep.

So I'm just gonna, I'm gonna wake everybody up.

If you never do wake up, well, that means you're dead.

Amen, I'm gonna leave that to God.

Amen.

I don't have one message for the sleep church and one message for the dead church.

Amen, don't have that.

So be increased minded.

And the first thing that I see here is rejoice and expectation of what's coming Now.

God has big plans.

He's not retracting, he is not drawing back, he's not pulling in his horns, he's not hedging his bets.

Listen, jesus was.

His blood is on the line here.

Jesus, you think that God is gonna let billions of people go to hell after the blood of Jesus has been shed?

He's got a plan to reach every unreached people group.

I'm not saying everybody's gonna get saved, but I'm saying we hadn't seen the harvest yet that we're gonna see.

All these red chairs are gonna be filled with people.

Amen, amen.

God has big plans and you're right in the middle of it.

You're part of it.

We ought to be getting up and rejoicing.

I was talking to Frank Jedjic this morning after church and chatting with him and he was laughing.

He said you were talking about discipline and his dad, frank Sr is 90 years old.

I mean, I knew him when he was 50, now he's 90.

Makes me feel really old.

So anyway, but he's visited here a few times.

I've known him all these years.

He's ushered at Lakewood.

I don't know if he still is, I doubt it.

But he said, you know, my dad sets the clock for five o'clock excuse me, four o'clock.

He gets up at four o'clock every day and the first 30 minutes he rejoices.

And he said, you know he was having back trouble, his back was giving trouble, and God put in his heart get up early and rejoice.

And so he's been getting up early and rejoicing, taking the praise care, and then he eats breakfast at 430, starts his day.

He's retired, he starts his day at 430.

Glory to God.

Talk about discipline.

But yeah, you know he's rejoicing.

I don't know if he's rejoicing over the right thing, but you know what?

At least he's rejoicing praise God.

That's what we ought to do.

Have a 90 year old man beat our time with the Lord, get up at four o'clock and rejoice.

I mean, let's prepare for something big.

Forget the failures of the past, previous disappointments, things that you just kind of missed out on.

You think, oh, that's it.

No, it's not.

It it's not over.

I said it's not over, it's not even God.

We hadn't even begun yet what God is gonna do in these last days.

I said we haven't even begun yet what God has done in these last days.

That song is more than they sang.

Our greatest days are ahead.

I believe that with every fiber of my being.

I refuse to be fatalistic, I refuse to believe the lie that the church is just gonna peter out and be nothing.

No, there's no way.

I have more confidence in God, more confidence in the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit is here.

Praise God.

Greater works, the works that I do, shall you do.

Also, jesus said and greater works than these shall you do?

We have not seen that yet, but we are going to see it.

And no, jesus didn't make it up, he was not speaking evangelistically.

Amen, that's a joke, you can laugh.

Evangelastic.

Stretch your faith, okay.

1 Peter 1.8, rejoice with joy, unspeakable and full of glory.

Praise God.

Come on, let's just practice.

Hallelujah.

Glory to God.

Thank you, jesus.

Greater works are in the offing, all right.

The second thing I see here is lengthen your cords or your ropes A tent.

When you pitch a tent, the ropes are kind of they're tied to tent pegs We'll get to that in a minute but they stretch up and they go up to the center pole and they kind of help hold the tent up.

And if it's not a rope, it's a piece of fabric inside the tent, but it's got to have a cable, it's got to have something that will hold the weight of the tent.

And so the bigger the tent, the longer the rope has to be, because you're scaling more area.

You've broken forth on the left hand, on the right.

When you do that, the center pole of the tent has got to be taller.

And so when you, when you so it, what does that mean?

It just means there's going to be change.

You're going to have to grow in your authority and to whom much is given, much is required.

You're going to have to grow in your accountability.

There's no such thing as having a bigger footprint without being accountable.

More you're going to have to answer to God, more you have to answer to the, to the, to the ministry of the church, more you have to be accountable to each other.

Hold each other accountable, call each other when you miss each other.

I mean, you know, you got to find each other.

One coach said one time they were getting back pounded at the halftime and he told him in the in the in the halftime Speech he made.

He said you know, you need to find each other out there because you need each other as a team.

Well, that's what we are.

We're a team, we're a company of Believers, so you need to find each other and need to stay in contact with one another and encourage one another.

And it can't all be done by the pastor, can't all be done by the staff.

You have to take your part.

I Said you have to take your part, lengthen your cords.

Everything has to change.

When you get bigger, I mean the tent pole gets bigger, the ropes get longer, which is a, which is a symbol of your authority and your accountability.

Both they both see the authorities on one side, the accountability is Pulling on the other, opposite direction.

Because, because if you just had authority with no accountability, what would happen?

Whether the rope would go flying off into space.

You got to have something that will create tension on the rope so it'll hold the weight of the tent.

I Must have been like four or five years old, my parents, we were camping.

I think we might have been going to Garner State Park.

Anybody ever heard of Garner State Park?

We used to go almost every year.

That is the coldest river.

The Frio River is named correctly.

It is the coldest river you've ever stuck your toe in.

I think it's colder than anything in Minnesota.

Even it feels like it just came off of a glacier, but anyway it came a rainstorm.

It was hot, man.

I think about hot in July.

It's hot there hundred degrees and you get in the water and you get cooled off, but then you get so cold when you come out of the water then you're hotter than ever because your body Sends all your blood to your core.

Your body thinks that you're freezing to death.

Say so.

It warms your vital organs and so then you get hotter than ever when you get back out of that water.

Anyway, I it started to rain, mother sent me in the tent.

We had this old canvas tent and I didn't like being in there because it was hot as blazes in there.

You know it's hot and I, even though it was cloudy and started to rain, is hot in that tent.

I Didn't like being in there.

I was laying there looking up at the tent and the tents right here in front of my face and I made the mistake.

It's raining cats and dogs.

I mean, that tent is shedding, the water is doing great.

But then I reach up there and stick my finger up there at the tent and all that water stood falling down Right in my face and I come out of that bed, I came off that cot and came outside, but but we're gonna get a bigger tent.

Amen, we're gonna get a tent that will, that will take care of all Situations, all right.

Then it says Lengthen your cords, strengthen your stakes, the tent pegs.

So it just goes to show you that if you've got a bigger tent, you've got more Tension on the ropes.

They're gonna put more force on the tent stakes.

So you've got to pay attention and have the bigger, bigger tent stakes and they've got to be down in the ground.

And some of these big tents, like you know, they used to use back in the 40s and 50s, is huge tents that would see, see, 10,000 people.

They had more than one center pole, they had a series of center poles and they had poles in between.

There was so much weight and and those ropes went out to the, to the tent pegs and those tent pegs screwed.

They were augured into the ground Five, six feet.

They had a special Powered machine that would just drill those things down in the in the ground, because there's so much.

You can't just hit it with a sledgehammer, you can't drive the tent peg down deep enough to hold the weight.

And so you've got to.

When you get bigger, you've got to strengthen your stakes.

Zechariah 10-4,.

Jesus is the nail or he's the tent peg.

We're gonna have to get more and more leaning on the Lord.

We're gonna have to let God do the work.

We're gonna have to lean on him.

We have to be rooted and grounded in love.

Bigger always means your love is tested, your love for each other, your love for God, your love for the ministry, your love for this church.

Your love is gonna be tested.

Your loyalty will be tested.

Are you with me now?

The bigger we get, the more our footprint grows, the more that we have those three words that God gave us he said perspective, power and prominence the more we represent God's perspective to this region, the more we stand up against evil and say no, you're not gonna have CRT in the school.

No, you're not gonna have sex perversion education in our school.

You're not gonna have it.

We're in the way of it.

We're not gonna let you.

Not, everybody's gonna like that.

I don't think our governor's gonna like it.

Maybe our lieutenant governor.

They both need dressing down, if you ask me.

They haven't done near enough and I'm glad for what little that governor's done.

At least he's come out on mass and all that.

And our attorney general is defending the mass mandate and all of that kind of saying no schools, you're not gonna mandate the mass, you're not gonna do it.

Lena Lena's not gonna get to do it, she's not gonna get to do it.

So she sued but it's going for the state Supreme Court.

She doesn't have a chance of prevailing in that.

So I give him credit for that.

But there's so much that James mentioned in those two bills that they haven't supported properly.

They haven't put their weight behind it.

It wasn't even on the agenda for the second session.

That's pathetic, frankly.

I said that's pathetic.

We're gonna stand against that.

We're gonna let them know.

Hey, you better shape up.

We're gonna primary you as soon as we can.

You better change your tune.

Plane to be Christian.

Claim Dan Patrick, big Baptist, baptist, deacon, come on, get saved, dan.

You're gonna let this.

Go on with our children.

You know I will say this.

I saw one of the most delightful headlines that I've seen in a long time in the Chronicle, right on the front page this morning.

It said abortion clinics are bracing against partial closure.

So that was really good news.

I thought that was one of the best headlines I've seen in a while.

They're panicking because they're fixing to go out of business.

So that's good.

We cheer out of boy, out of boy.

So strengthen your stakes, the pressure on the tent bag.

You have to be rooted and grounded in love and we have to be rooted and grounded in God's Word.

Growth and change and challenge will test your love.

Walk, it'll test your faith, but be increased minded.

Come on, lift your hands and receive tonight.

Praise God, god's got big plans.

Our greatest days are ahead.

I said our greatest days are ahead of us.

I really believe that with all my heart.

Hey, seventeen hundred thousand people.