Embracing The Word Of Faith

Well, we want to get into the word with you tonight.

So if you've got your Bible right there, why don't you lift it up and wave it around?

Make Jesus glad than the devil mad.

Let's say this together Say Heavenly Father, I'm watching live stream tonight because I am hungry for the Word of God.

My faith is being tested Every advancement that I make.

I know the enemy resists me, but this is the victory that overcomes the devil, even my faith.

And my faith comes by hearing, and hearing, not by having heard.

So tonight I'm hearing the Word of God and that word to me is seed, it's nourishment and it's water, and I thank you for it in Jesus' name, amen.

Let's look in our Bibles tonight, at 2 Timothy, chapter two, and also, while you're turning, find Proverbs 23.

Let me start with Timothy 2.

2 Timothy 2:11

Timothy 2, verse 11.

Paul writing to his son in the faith, and he said it's a faithful saying, for if we be dead with him, we shall also live with him.

Talking about being dead in Christ.

Dead with Christ.

Dead to what?

Dead?

To sin.

It is a faithful saying.

So if we suffer, you know how much just dead people suffer.

They don't suffer.

You know.

They don't feel a thing they're feeling no pain.

That's the way we ought to be.

So dead in Christ.

I thought we were supposed to be alive here.

Yeah, we're alive to the spirit, but dead to persecution.

Persecution doesn't bother us.

The suffering here is not sickness and disease, it's persecution.

If we suffer, we shall also reign with him.

See, people, people who don't suffer persecution, that means they don't stand for anything, they're not contending for anything, and so they're not gonna reign, they're not reigning, they're not ruling.

It's when you stand up and you rule and reign, like we're about to do with our constitution.

You know we're gonna suffer some persecution, but you know what?

Don't bother us If we suffer, we shall also reign with him.

If we deny him, he also will deny us If we believe not.

Yet he abideth faithful.

He cannot deny himself Of these things.

Put them in remembers.

In other words, this sounds kinda tough, doesn't it?

And he's telling Timothy.

He's saying preach this to your congregations.

See, timothy had more than one church, he had several.

He was an apostle in his own right, he was a lower rank and he was the spiritual son of Paul.

But he's saying preach this.

That's why I'm preaching this to you.

Put them in remembrance, charging them before the Lord.

I charge you tonight, before the Lord, that you strive, not about words to no profit, but to the subverting of the heroes.

Study to show yourself approved under God, a workman that needed not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the Word of truth.

But shun profane and vain babblings, for they will increase unto more ungodliness and their Word will eat, as does a canker, of whom is Hamanaeus and Pheletus.

I mean, he names, names.

He said, for example, these two guys who, concerning the truth, have aired saying that the resurrection is in the hands of God, the resurrection is passed already and overthrow the faith of some.

Nevertheless, the foundation of God stands sure or steady, having this seal.

The Lord knows them that are His, and let everyone that name it the name of Christ depart from iniquity.

And so tonight I'm sharing a message entitled Embracing the Word of Truth, paul to his son, timothy.

He's telling him you know, here's why you need to study, son.

You need to be a steadier of the Word to be approved of God.

We've got a lot of preachers right now that don't study, they play golf, they're involved in everything but the Word.

They're involved in all kinds of programs, and some of them are good programs.

Some of them are, you know, but nothing beats the Word.

And he said, you know you need to study to be approved of God, to be a workman, or the word workman means to be a teacher or a laborer.

Well, pastor, I'm not a teacher, I'm not a pastor, this doesn't apply to me.

Well, no, he said, put these things in remembrance to the church.

So we're all teachers in the sense that people come to us and wanna know why do we have a smile on our face, why are we happy, why are we joyful?

And we need to be able to share truth, because what's going on out there in the streets is lies, lies after lies.

You know, I've decided that I wanna have my own slogan.

I've been hearing a slogan defund the police, defund the police.

I say defund the Supreme Court, let's defund them.

Let's just drive up there and then they won't have a Supreme Court building.

They'll have to meet by the Supreme Court building.

They'll have to meet by, you know, zoom, all right.

So he said, you know, to be approved of God, to be a workman, to be a teacher or a laborer, that's unashamed when you don't study.

You know, the Bible says, rightly, dividing the word of truth.

You know, if the word of truth can be rightly divided, it can be wrongly divided, and Hymenaeus and Phyletes had wrongly divided the word of truth and they were preaching a message that overthrew the faith of some of the people that listened to them.

They said, oh, the resurrection's already happened, it's already done.

They could have been more wrong.

And people listen to them.

There are people that are teaching and preaching falsehood right now, and in this country, not just everywhere else in this country and the faith of people is being overthrown, and I really do believe that the church is as weak as it is and has not stood up on its hind legs and said no to these little hitlers across the country, like little county judges and little mayors that tell you that you can't go to church, that you're going to have to meet online only or maybe at the most, have a few people in the parking lot, but you've got to have 10 feet between the cars, and all of these rules, rules, rules, rules, rules, rules.

Listen, we don't have to put up with this.

Look at the thousands of protesters and looters and rioters that went through the streets and nobody arrested them for violating social distance.

It's so silly.

They want to arrest.

They want to double down now on mass.

I see where Mayor Sylvester Turner wants people to be arrested for not wearing a mask.

You know what, baloney on you, I'm not wearing a mask.

Deal with it.

Rightly dividing what does that mean, pat?

Rightly dividing Okay.

Rightly dividing means cut along a straight line to cut a straight road.

The metaphor there is like plowing a straight furrow.

You know, if you're a farmer, you can't go.

You can't get behind the mule and have him go like this, you know.

And then when you get to the end of the field, you turn around and turn the mule around, turn the plow around, and are you going to try to go like that again?

You're not going to be able to follow that curve.

I mean, you're going to leave big spots, you're going to cross over the part that you plowed before and cross over it.

You're going to miss the whole field up.

Why?

Because you didn't plow a straight line.

There's a lot of people that are not rightly dividing the word of truth.

They're going over it against themselves, they're contradicting themselves and they wind up with nothing.

And it's not so bad if it was just their life that was affected, but if they're really a teacher or a laborer or a workman.

They're going to hurt somebody else, they're going to misinform someone, and so another metaphor is like a stone mason cutting and squaring a stone.

You know, being a home builder all those years, I mean bricklayers.

They had to make sure that the wall they were building, that wall was built one line of brick at a time and they had these boards in the corners and they had a string and they laid the brick in the wall to the string and they would tap it down and the mortar would shoot out and then they raked the mortar off, you know, and they were just really good at doing it fast.

But you know people that don't know how to do it.

They take them all day just to do one course of brick.

But the most important thing was that brick had to be to that string so that when you look down the wall it wouldn't go like this and it would have to be plumb, because if you didn't have the brick wall plumb, if you let it go like this as it went to the top, it was like I saw a chimney one time that was eight inches out of plumb at the top and it was about to fall out in the backyard.

We had to tear that and the people had a 10 year warranty and the warranty company sent me over there to talk to them and they wound up settling with a warranty company for a bunch of money $30,000 or something.

They had to tear the whole chimney off the house and rebuild it because it was about to fall out in the yard and somebody didn't plumb that deal up.

Well, that's kind of the way it is with the Word of God.

We need to have a plumb and a square foundation of the Word.

It has to be accurate.

How do you do that?

Studying, studying the Word and let the Holy Spirit show you.

Another kind of way to look at this is like carving meat.

You know, took me a long time to learn how to carve the turkey for the Thanksgiving dinner.

You know I didn't know how to do that at first so I kind of hacked on it.

You know it was kind of a mess.

But you know you read.

Nowadays you got YouTube videos so it kind of helps you.

But back in my day when I started out my first turkey, I didn't have YouTube and it was pretty messy.

But you know, if you ever watched a butcher.

I mean a butcher can take a knife and he can go through a cow or whatever, a side of beef or something, and he can cut those muscles out.

He can cut those steaks.

I used to like to buy steaks at a place on Richmond Avenue, pete's, fine meats.

If you're still in business, pete, I'm giving you a free plug.

But they had prime beef and back then H-E-B didn't have prime beef, randalls didn't have prime.

They had choice.

So if you wanted prime you went to Pete's.

And so, pete, I'd go in there and I'd say I want to hold tenderloin.

So they'd, man, they'd get that tenderloin out and they'd start slicing off the fat and they would trim it all up, get all the excess off of it, lay it on a table.

How thick do you want them?

I want them two inches thick.

And, man, I mean two inches thick.

And they didn't cut it.

You know the tenderloin is not perfect, it's tapered, so it's not.

So if you cut down, if you don't cut correctly, your steak is lopsided.

It's thin on one side and thick on the other.

That's no good.

I mean, I'm not paying the big bucks for my steak to be like that because it's going to be well done and medium rare.

I mean I want the thing consistent, but I mean they could put they cut that two inch fillet, it was perfect, wrapped it up.

What I'm talking about is the Word of God requires some, some attention, and if you put the attention, god will make sure that he you're able to, to feed on that while you're studying and get revelations where you can help share the truth.

We're talking about embracing the Word of truth.

It's called the Word of His grace, it's talked about.

It's called the Word of faith.

It's called the Word of truth.

The Holy Ghost is called the spirit of truth.

And do we need the truth right now, with every lie that's being told out there?

And we need the truth.

And so the major implications of Paul talking to Timothy like this is that you can actually be disapproved of God.

I believe there's a lot of ministers and pastors that, because of what I'm teaching and preaching, if they haven't done, they're disapproved.

Wouldn't you hate to be in a church where God disapproved of the ministry?

But they're out there.

I'm telling you.

They're out there and they wrongly divide the Word of truth.

They bring error, they overthrow people's faith.

He mentioned a couple of examples.

I'm an AS infelitus.

I've got a couple examples.

I don't mind, you know, giving you Rick Warren.

He's a false pastor, don't listen to him.

Don't listen to him.

Don't listen to Joseph Prince.

He's a false teacher.

And I happen to know in Joseph Prince's who went to ORU and I happen to know that Oral Roberts approached him and tried to help him.

He wouldn't listen.

And I know that other ministers went to him and tried to talk to him about his doctor and he wouldn't listen.

And so you know, stay away from him.

I can't believe you're saying this.

That's not love.

No, it's not.

I love you.

I'm supposed to run wolves off, I'm supposed to watch over your souls as one that gives an account.

And we've had some.

I'll give you some old ones.

Herbert W Armstrong was head of the Worldwide Church of God.

You might have, years ago, you might have seen these plain truth magazines he had everywhere and there was a farm, little barbecue place and I won't mention their name, but they had a store and a barbecue place in our neighborhood that I used to go to all the time and when I got saved I'd go in there and I saw this magazine, plain truth, and I didn't know what it was.

I picked it up, started reading it and it wasn't scriptural.

I mean, I knew enough of the Bible and knew that wasn't right.

And then I found out about the guy.

He's this big cult, worldwide Church of God.

It was huge, I mean, he had a lot of influence and by this time he had gotten pretty old.

And so I would go into that store, you know, and while I'm waiting on my barbecue sandwich, I'd pick up a couple of those magazines.

I'd take them home, I'd mark them up and put scripture references in there, take them back and put them in the magazine rack for the next person to pick up.

But anyway, do you know, at the end of his life, right before he died, he repented and he admitted that he had preached error and asked for forgiveness.

Isn't that amazing?

But we had Carlton Pearson back in the 80s.

I mean, he was a great preacher.

I listened to him.

He was one of the best preachers I ever heard.

He could hold you spellbound.

And you know, somehow I won't go into the long detail but he just listened to the wrong spirit.

It got in his ear and he started believing the doctrine of demons.

They started accusing what he believed to him and he started doubting the things that he had preached and he went completely off the rails.

I mean, I've seen it.

I said I've seen it and so, listen, let's stick with the word of truth.

We need the word of truth.

Let's look at well, I don't have to turn there, I'll just tell you about it.

It's 1 Samuel 3.1.

This is in the time of Eli, you know, and Eli had two sons that were robbing the people of God in the temple and he wouldn't correct his sons.

And Samuel had little.

Samuel was a little boy and he was keeping Samuel.

And the Bible says in 1 Samuel 3.1 that everyone did what was right in their own eyes.

Eli was not guiding Israel, he was not doing his job.

Everybody did what was right in their own eyes.

There was no priesthood, there was no prophet to guide the people and they were just like sheep without a shepherd.

And God judged Eli.

His, both of his sons died and when he heard the news, he fell over.

It was a heavy guy.

He fell over backward and broke his neck and died right there on the spot.

And that was.

You know, that was Samuel, beginning of the prophet Samuel.

And another place and judge is 2125,.

It says there the Word of God was rare and there was no open vision.

Well, that means the prophets weren't doing their jobs, they were not staying in contact with prayer and reading their scrolls, and all of that they had the first five books of the Bible.

They weren't reading them.

So In December of 2003, when we were preparing to build this building, god spoke to me.

There's a dearth of the word, or dearth means famine, and it's kind of like similar to these words right here it's, you know, and I said but Lord, what does that mean?

There's more churches than ever before.

They're not all derelict, they're not all.

I mean, there's a lot of churches like ours.

That's preaching the Word.

He said your children don't know what you know, in other words, the next generation.

And we are seeing it today.

And some of these writers and looters, these people that are out there, they're white and mostly girls, mostly women.

They are brainwashed, college educated people that got radicalized by these crazy professors.

They're communists, they're socialists, they're anarchists.

They're getting paid big bucks, and by who?

Well, our tax money, basically, because this is all student loans it's governed by.

Under Obama.

He moved all the student loan business under federal control.

I mean this is just ridiculous.

What we're funding is the pollution of the younger generation, and every generation rebels against the one before it.

I remember, you know my generation, the baby boomers.

We rebelled against the World War II generation and all of that, and we had our own.

You know, I call them hippie dope fiends.

Thank God I never was one of those, but anyway I knew some.

But we had our protests, we had all that stuff going on, and so it's kind of normal for a disconnect.

But what we're seeing right now is a demonic assault by the spirit of Antichrist to deceive, you know, a pastor sounds so well.

No, I believe Malachi, chapter four Bible says that Elijah, or the spirit of Elijah, will come and turn the hearts of the fathers to the children and the children to the fathers.

What we need in the church is more fathers.

We need more ministers that should be fathers to step up to the plate.

And I stepped up to the plate when my father, john Osteen, went to heaven back in 1999.

That's when I had a visitation of God and I decided, you know, I mean I had a visitation and I just stepped to the plate.

I didn't feel worthy of it.

And it's not about me feeling worthy, it's about receiving a gifting.

And we've got to have the rise of fathers.

And what are fathers?

Do fathers give you guidance?

They give you God.

You can't be a father when you're 30.

You know, there's no fathers of that age.

You haven't lived long enough.

God uses your life experiences and now that I'm my age, I won't.

Well, I'll tell you, I'm 73.

I've lived long enough.

I've seen a few things.

I mean, I've learned a few things by accident, you know.

And so we.

We need fathers to guide us and to give us another way to think about things.

And I know, with my own father I went through a time when I didn't think that he knew anything about anything.

I was very resistant to even listening to him.

You know, around the ages of 16 to about 20, right in there.

Dad, dad, dad.

But you know, when I, when I got, when I grew up and I got married and I'm 21, 22, all of a sudden I realized how cool my dad was and how valuable he was in my life, and I wouldn't even save yet.

But in Proverbs 23, 23,.

We didn't read that one.

It's on my list of ones, it's.

I'll just quote it by the truth and sell it not.

And also wisdom, instruction and understanding by the truth and sell it not.

And Isaiah 55 says come and buy without money and without price.

So it's not with money that we buy it, but it's by staying in constant contact with the Holy Ghost that lives on the inside of you.

He's the wisest thing you know.

He'll make you look like a genius if you'll listen to it.

He's the source of every kind of wisdom and knowledge and he uses the Word of God.

He will illuminate the Word to your spirit If you will study the Bible.

You can't even read the Bible, much less study it.

Everybody's got the same problem time.

But you know, one of these days, if we don't wake up, we're going to have nothing but time, and we won't like the time we have because things, things are coming unglued and it's time for the church to rise up, amen.

It's time for the church to be able to speak the truth and love.

And so if we do that, if we come and buy the truth and sell it not, then we, our faith, won't be overthrown.

We'll be able to know when someone is speaking something that's not right.

We might not even know mentally what's wrong, we'll know.

Down here, see, that's the amazing thing about the Holy Ghost he can give you a red light.

And what you heard might have sounded very, very logical, but down here, uh-uh, uh-uh, uh-uh, uh-uh, and I've had it function in my life over and over again.

I have to have a functioning witness of the spirit and you must have it too in these days.

And it says here in verse 14, 2 Timothy.

It says you know, don't strive or argue about words to no prophet.

Some words are just not profitable, some arguments are just not profitable.

There are some people you're not going to change their mind.

You know.

The best you can do is just seed the Word of God, just speak what the Word of God says, and uh, and move on to people that have a genuine interest in the truth.

And uh, these words that are not profitable.

They lead to the word subverting means catastrophe.

You know what catastrophe means.

It's not good, you don't want that.

But words are important and words mean something.

That's the thing about the left wing, the Democrat Party and the news media.

They're changing the English language and redefining words and we have got to stick with the word, you know.

You got to stick with the word of truth.

So, uh, I've got one, two, three, four things for you to stir yourself up on.

You know, if preachers have to feed the flock of God and you're one that's being fed then you need to do your side of it.

See, my side is to study to make myself approved under God, a workman that needed not be ashamed, rightly divided in the word of truth.

That's my side, your side.

You've got a side on your side that when I speak like I am, then your part to play is got.

I've got four things.

Number one stir yourself up.

Well, you know what it means to stir yourself up, right?

I mean, you've got a fire in there, stir it up and get it burning.

Okay, get it cooking.

You know, I was meeting with our public relations expert.

We're hiring someone to help us with the next step in waking up the church across the country and he was asking me how this all came about.

When I finished talking to him about 30 minutes, I mean I felt my face was and I went into a mirror.

We took a little break, I went in, I was looking in the mirror, my face was blood red.

I was just all stirred.

I was stirred up.

He had.

He had, he stirred up the passion that I have for this.

And so stir yourself up, number one, to love the Word of truth.

I mean that's what it means by the by the truth and sell it.

Not I mean read your Bible and pray and study.

We've all got challenges of time, too busy.

Well, cut some things off that are not that profitable.

They're just things you're doing that you don't have to do.

There are clubs you're involved with or whatever.

There's all kinds of obligations that you have set upon yourself and they all make a demand on your time, and I can't tell you any more important right now than to give yourself to the Word of truth and read your Bible.

I've been saying this as long as I've been in the ministry.

But if you were like me and you talk to people that have trouble, almost every one of them quit reading their Bible years ago because they thought they already read it.

Well, that's not how it works.

You read it all the time.

You don't read it Just, I don't need to read it already.

No, you read it every day.

It's, it's fresh information, and when you cut yourself off from that, you're going to have trouble, you're going to have catastrophe.

So read your Bible.

Stir yourself up to read your Bible and pray the Bible, pray the Word.

Busy is not an excuse.

Busy I mean one of these days you won't be busy.

So just reallocate the time that it takes to do what I'm saying.

Stir yourself up.

Stir yourself up Number two to sit under the teaching of your pastor first.

Let it be the priority, the priority I just over the years I've seen people run to every kind of meeting.

They'll go to some conference across the country.

There's nothing wrong with going to a conference, nothing wrong to go.

If it's a good Bible conference or a good meeting to go to, there's nothing wrong with it.

But what I'm saying is, if it's taking the place of what I'm speaking to you and you feed on somebody else's ministry, they're not anointed to be your pastor, they're not anointed to feed you what you need right now, it might be good but it's not profitable, it's not ideal.

I like it to kind of going to a nice restaurant and just saying, no, I'm just going to order dessert.

You do that enough.

You're not going to, you'll be malnourished.

You might like it, it might be a lot of fun.

The Bible talks about to Timothy.

He told to Timothy.

He said they're going to be people that are going to have itching ears, that will heep to them, teachers that will tell them what they want to hear.

I've seen that, seen that periodically, when I'm talking to people I can tell have you ever heard of so?

And so, oh, wow, he's really good.

Well, I think to myself, well, I'm really good.

If you listen to me, see, that's, I'm not bragging on me, I'm just thinking you're missing the mark.

You're missing out on what God has served you.

It's a T-bone steak and you're deciding to eat the cherry off of the sundae.

That's about what it is.

I mean, you're, you're, you're missing it First.

Everybody say first, you'll make it priority.

I, you know, I would not allow myself and I sat under John Osteen's ministry.

We had the best.

I mean we had.

You know, brother Hagin, we had TL Osborne.

We just name it, name all of the heroes of the Word of Faith movement.

We had them all right and I enjoyed them.

But when they left, I would, I would start talking like this honey, I can't wait to get back to church.

I want to hear Brother Osteen.

I really miss hearing him.

I would say that, regardless of how I felt.

I might not feel that way.

I might feel like man.

I'd like to go.

I want to go to Tulsa and finish up.

Brother Hagin, I want to keep hearing what he.

No, I trained myself to give Brother Osteen that kind of, and then it wound up being like that.

He.

He was my favorite preacher and it needs to be that way.

I'm not trying to be your favorite for my ego.

I'm trying to say that God has a, a purpose behind it.

It's a connection, it's a glorious connection.

So stir yourself up.

See, sometimes you've got to stir yourself up, especially if I say something that you don't understand.

The disciples, jesus, was always saying things they didn't understand.

In fact, one time he said something unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man, drink his blood, you have no life in you.

Seventy preachers left him.

They just didn't understand, and they didn't.

Well, we don't understand, but we just know that you have a, you know the word of truth, and so they stuck with him.

They, they stuck with Jesus, even when they didn't understand.

All right, so love the word of truth, sit under the teaching of your pastor.

First, primarily, number three stir yourself up to eat what you're fed.

Don't just sniff it.

Wow, boy, that smells really good.

Wow, no, you're going to have.

That's where.

That's where study comes in.

That's where you've got to take a knife and fork, cut it up and bite size pieces.

Say, how do you eat an elephant?

Sometimes it feel like I'm preaching an elephant out there.

I feel like it's out there Huge.

How do you eat it?

One spoonful at a time.

It takes.

You're going to have to cut it up.

I'm not going to sit there and cut it up for you and feed to you.

Here you go.

Here you come, right open, here you go.

We used to do that with the kids when they were little, but I don't do that.

So, eat what you're fed.

Get your knife, your fork, so to speak.

Cut up, chew, swallow, repeat until you got it all.

You know that'll take up most of your time.

That'll pretty much.

You know it'll satisfy the need that you have.

If you've got so much extra time and extra energy to go some place else, well great, as long as it's a good place.

So what do I mean by chewing and following?

Well, meditating, pondering, thinking, considering.

That just takes time.

You have to sit somewhere and think about what I preach and look at it and look, run the references and put some notes down.

Look at your notes that you took in church.

Man, I still have all the notes I ever took at Lakewood.

I mean I need more storage.

I've got notebook after notebook and even into this day when visiting preachers.

I've got notebooks of Billy Brim and notebooks of lots of people.

And so eat what you're fed and let it nourish you.

And then, number four, store yourself up to be a doer, to be a doer of the Word and not just a hearer.

Only See James 1,.

22 said if you just hear it and you don't do it, then you deceive yourself.

And there's such deception that we are in and we're susceptible to being deceived when we don't do what the Word says to do.

And we don't need any more susceptibility because it's just bombarding.

I was just tuned into the local news and just nothing but except they've turned away from the protests and all of that.

And all they wanna hear on the news channel two, all they wanna talk about is the virus.

Well, we've got more people in the hospital.

Oh, we got this.

Oh, it's the second wave.

There is no second wave.

It's dying, it's over, it's done.

Well, what do you mean?

There's people still, well, they're just, they found out, they got it, that's all I mean.

There's susceptible people that are getting sick, but the pandemic is over with.

It's over with.

Quit giving it life.

And so I just turned it off.

I don't wanna hear anymore about social distancing when I saw thousands of people out there jammed up, looting, rioting, screaming, cussing, dishonoring our cops, lying about them.

Yeah, yeah, okay, one cop did a terrible thing.

Now they've got arrested.

Another guy it's debatable whether he should be arrested.

I mean, I saw the video.

It's debatable.

I hope he gets off, because that guy, he took a taser anyway, I don't wanna get into it.

Let's stick with the truth.

Stick with the truth.

Be a doer of the word, not a hearer deceiving your own selves.

Look at John chapter eight.

This is worth looking at, john chapter eight.

I trust you're getting something out of this.

Most of you heard it, but we need to hear it again and again.

Get it watered.

Get it watered.

John eight Jesus is saying then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him If you continue in my word, then are you my disciples indeed, and you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.

Well, most of the time we quote part of verse 32, we misquote the whole intention of those two verses.

We say the truth will make you free.

Well, when you just say that, like you really know something, that's one of those sayings that's kind of equivalent to everything happens for a reason, I mean that's just not.

The truth will not make you free, it's tied to if you continue in my word, then are you my disciples indeed, and you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.

So only the truth that you know and practice will ensure your freedom from deception.

And again, this is one of the big problems, why the church is walking in deception, why they're listening to government unelected government bureaucrats in many cases telling them what to do with their lives and how to sit home and go broke and how to be a weirdo and be afraid of people and not shake hands with anybody and not hug any.

I mean this is ridiculous and I don't accept it.

Nothing has changed.

I don't accept that.

Everything's changed.

No, nothing's changed.

We're going right in the middle of the road.

Nothing's changed.

We're going right back to what we've always done love people.

And so, if you're a disciple.

How many of you consider that you're a disciple?

See, that means a disciplined one.

Then you have to what continue in the word?

It can't be something you, well, I've read the Bible.

I've read the Bible.

No, you read the Bible every day.

You read.

No, you don't not read.

You read and you digest and you take the messages and you digest those and you stir yourself up and then, finally, you will be free, you will embrace the word of truth and you will be inoculated and vaccinated against deception.

Let's lift our hands and receive the word of God, hallelujah.

Thank you, lord, for the word of truth.

We embrace it fully, embrace the word of truth.

We hold it to our bosom and we will not believe a lie, not as long as we have the spirit of God living on the inside of us.

Jesus' name, amen.