The Power Of The Prevailing Word

The Bible's up, wave them around, make Jesus glad, the devil mad.

You know the Holy Ghost is here to make the Word real to you.

Let's say this together Say Heavenly Father, oh your presence.

Money can't buy what I've experienced already.

But there's so much more in store out of the Holy written Word of God.

Not only do I revere you, holy Spirit, but I revere the Holy Word of God and I'm hungry for the Word.

And I say to you today that I'll not only hear it but I'll understand it and I will be a doer of it.

In Jesus' name, amen.

You can be seated Glad to have our live stream audience with us today too, and praise God.

Let's turn in our Bibles to Acts, chapter 19.

Acts 19 · chapter mention

You know this is my.

I'm on the book of Acts.

Now I'd like to rotate.

I have a Bible reading system.

I'm not bound by the system, but it does give me a way to aim at making sure that I cover all the material.

So the way I read the Bible, I read it through about all the New Testament about four times a year and the Old Testament about once a year.

It's a pretty good, you know.

It's a pretty good ratio because we do live in the New Testament, but we need to know what's in the Old because it prefigures everything we have.

And Acts, chapter 19, is talking about Saul or Paul.

Acts 19 · chapter mention

And he found disciples in Ephesus, found out they weren't saved, they were still doing John's thing after John had died.

And so he got them saved, got them filled with the Holy Ghost, and then he said this to them, and there were about 12.

And he went into the synagogue and spoke boldly for the space of three months, verse eight.

He spoke boldly for the space of three months, disputing and persuading the things concerning the kingdom of God.

But when diverse were hardened and believed not but spoke evil of that way before the multitude, he departed from there and he separated the disciples disputing daily in the school of one tyrannous.

And this continued by the space of two years.

Everybody say two years.

So two years and three months, that's 27 months.

That's a long time being one place preaching.

We've been here 25 years, amen.

And.

And so it's that all they which dwelt in Asia Minor that's not Asia, but Asia Minor heard the word of the Lord Jesus, both Jews and Greeks.

And God brought special miracles by the hands of Paul, so that from his body were brought into the sick handkerchiefs or aprons and the diseases departed from them and evil spirits went out of them.

Then certain of the vagabond Jews exorcists took upon them to call over them, which had evil spirits, the name of the Lord Jesus, saying we adjure you by the Jesus, that by the, by Jesus whom Paul preaching, and there were seven sons of one, sceva, a Jew and chief of the priest, which did so in the evil spirit answered and said Jesus I know and Paul, I know, but who are you and the man in whom the evil spirit was leaped on them and overcame them and prevailed against them, so that they fled out of that house naked and wounded.

Film at 11.

And this was known to all the Jews and Greeks also dwelling at Ephesus and fear fell on them.

What fear?

The fear of God.

It's almost absent in our society.

It's almost absent in our churches.

I'm ashamed to say, more fear of COVID than the fear of God.

Sorry about that.

I diverse.

Okay, digress, all right, so I'm a try.

This was known to all the Jews and Greeks dwelling at Ephesus.

Fear fell on them all and the name of the Lord Jesus was magnified and many that believed came and confessed and showed their deeds, many of them also, which used curious arcs.

That's the occult.

The occult they used the curious arts and they brought their books together and burned them before all men.

And they counted the price of them and found it to be 50,000 pieces of silver.

I wonder how many pieces of silver 1,000 pieces of silver that would exist in Houston if we burned all the junk, all the crack pipes, all the books, all the thumb drives.

I used to say CDs, but people don't even use CDs.

I've got a Ford truck that didn't even have a CD player.

I need a thumb drive.

When are we going to start giving out thumb drives to the CDs?

I think we need to upgrade in that area.

And so they burned all these things.

Why?

Because they repented so mightily, grew the Word of God and prevailed.

Now you know that's what we want to talk about the power of the prevailing Word.

The power of the prevailing Word.

You know this is a Holy Ghost church, but we're also a Word church.

I mean we need both the Word and the Spirit.

When God gave me the name for this church, I have to confess I kind of argued a little bit.

I said Lord, that's a long name Glorious way.

Church is hard to spell Glorious.

I mean, not everybody can even spell glorious.

And then we had a young lady that was signed us up to get a little portion of her phone bill every month.

Back when we started the church back in the 90s, remember they had all these different phone companies.

You know you'd sign up, we'd get a check for 47 cents, you know, every so every 90 days.

I think it took that long to even get 47 cents, but we were grateful.

But the first time it came to the church it said Gloria swade.

And so we've been joking about Gloria ever since.

But we need the Word, but we need the Holy Ghost, we need the Word of God, the Word of God.

Here we see that the Word of God has the ability.

Not only it has the ability to grow.

How does the Word of God grow in your heart?

It can grow in influence and mightily, not just prevail, mightily prevail.

And it prevailed over a whole region, Asia minor.

It didn't just prevail on a corner, then on the street corner.

I mean this word that's going out for 25 years is mildly prevailing and God is moving it out even further than just this area, but it's going all over the country.

It's going all over the world.

Are you with me now?

Jesus is alive and so is the Word of God, amen.

I mean the Word starts out small in comparison with the circumstances.

I want you to think about Ephesus at that time.

I mean, they were a place where they worship the great goddess Diana whoever she is she's not real, I can tell you that and they worshiped the God of the occult.

They practiced the dark arts.

They got into all kinds of things.

We have imported all kinds of false religions into this country in the last 20 years, since 9-11.

And it grieves me to say that we've just opened.

Not only did we open our borders, we've opened up our immigration policies.

It needs to be completely revamped and changed.

We can.

I'm telling you we are bringing in people that are never gonna believe this.

Well, pastor, that seems so fatal.

Well listen, paul had to leave the group that was arguing with him.

He spent three months preaching the Word, and God always confirms his Word was signs following.

So I know they may not have been special miracles, but there were miracles, ordinary miracles.

What's an ordinary miracle?

Anyway Makes you scratch your head.

What is an ordinary miracle Compared to a special miracle, but anyway there were those, because Paul walked in the supernatural on a constant basis.

You can't preach the Word of God without there being God backing you up, and they did not accept it, just like a lot of people don't accept it now.

And yet two men, a woman and a man in a white coat, can say you need to wear a mask, you need to wear gloves, you need to stay home and you need to do that.

And then you need to shut your business down, go broke, and then you'll be safe.

Safe isn't a ridiculous word.

There's only safety in believing the gospel.

That's the only safety we have.

We don't have safety in masks or social distancing.

Now, I believe in hygiene.

I think we ought to wash our hands.

Well, we always done that.

Mama taught me to wash my hands.

I ignored her, but I washed my hands sometimes.

I mean, we'd play outside all day.

My fingernails would be dirty.

My hands are dirty.

My face is dirty.

I didn't die.

My God's sake.

This is nuts.

I'll out-diagress again, I just keep.

But Paul kept on preaching and teaching and demonstrating, despite the opposition.

There's been some opposition.

You start preaching the Word of Faith that you can have what you say.

You start preaching that laying hands on the sick and they will recover.

You start preaching that demons can be cast out of people.

See, we've never been ashamed of speaking in tongues, laying hands on the sick, casting out demons Never, never been ashamed of.

And when you're like that, you're gonna have people speak against you.

You know you have to develop a thick skin and keep a tender heart, that's, you know.

It takes a little practice and so he just kept on.

And the Word of God is designed to prevail.

Listen to what the word prevail means.

It means to exercise or to project force.

To project force, that's what our military does.

That's why we're sailing through the Chinese straits over there, the straits of Taiwan, and the Chinese going ape, they're going crazy and they want us to stay away.

Well, we're not staying away, we're projecting our power.

We're gonna let them know they're not in charge of the entire world, but the word of God projects power or projects force.

Forveil means to do much work and to have strength to overcome.

The word of God has strength to overcome.

That's why we've made sure on getting the word of God into you, because if you've got that word of God into you, you're gonna prevail, amen.

You know, and so I know people get excited about the spectacular.

They get excited when anybody's healed instantly or they get some, and we've had some amazing miracles in this church.

We'll continue.

We'll continue because we let the Holy Ghost move and we believe in the gifts of the spirit, but we ought to also be equally thrilled with the word growing and mightily prevailing.

This is the thing that in the last couple of years that God, I decided.

You know we really, really need to emphasize how important the word of God is.

You know the word without the spirit and you just dry up the spirit without the word and you blow up.

I mean people running around.

They don't even know why they're running, they just got excited.

We believe in running, but we also wanna know, we wanna have knowledge.

We don't just have inspiration, we want information.

You might get inspired in a service and you might be so high and so, and so you know, just in love with Jesus.

But if you hadn't gotten the word to keep you that way when you walk out the door, you hadn't gotten much that will steady you when the whole world is shaking.

You need the word of God.

Let's be thrilled about the word.

You know, when you're thrilled about the word, it'll work for you and it's mightily prevailing.

So the word of God prevails over Three things.

I just want to leave with you today the Word of God.

Everybody say I love the Word of God, I ingest the Word of God.

I Mean that means you, you eat and you chew, you know, you, you, you know you just don't gulp it down and then it just kind of gives you indigestion.

No, you feed on it, you ingest it with the idea that it's nourishment for your faith and development, for your spirit, man.

So the Word of God prevails over number one, the naysayers, the doubters and debaters of this world, in other words the hardened.

You know they were hardened.

It says here in verse 8.

It says that verse 9 it they were hardened.

He spoke to him and preached to him for three months and and diverse were hardened.

And what do you do?

Well, you leave them and find people that are hungry.

Don't just spend all your time on people that don't want to listen to you.

Well, I know, but I've just I've got such a burden for such and such.

I've got to say listen, have a burden for people that are hungry.

Jesus didn't stay at one place.

He kept going.

He kept going and anybody that rejected him.

In fact, he'd say don't ever go in Bethsaida, don't go, don't go there.

Don't tell them that I healed you.

Stay out of that town.

I've already done great miracles there and they rejected them.

They don't have the right to hear it another time.

Don't tell them anything.

People have a burden.

No, your burden ought to be to go out into the right harvest.

I Don't want to go in front of a bunch of dead grass.

I want, I want, I want to go where the grass is green and people are ready to receive.

Are you with me now?

And so then verse 10, it says after two years, everyone, jews and Gentiles.

Now, now, what does that mean exactly?

Where there's three groups of people, according to first Corinthians, chapter 10?

1 Corinthians 10 · chapter mention

There's three groups of people on the earth.

There's the Jews, which have a covenant with God.

There are the Gentiles, or the Greeks.

Another word for it Greeks, because the known world that at that time, some part of the early church with Greeks.

It just means the uncovented ones, the ones that don't have a covenant with God.

They're the unbelieving, vast unbelieving people in the earth.

They don't, they're not Jewish, and then the third people are the Christians and we have a better covenant.

Then you know.

So there's two covenant people and one that doesn't have a covenant.

So the gospel is designed for both groups.

The Jews and the Gentiles are the uncovented dead ones.

I'll say that right one of these days.

And so what, you want to preach the word to them.

But if they become disputing with you, if they argue with you, if they harden their hearts, then we to move on and move to the next group.

If we keep spending our time with people that are rejecting what you're saying, you need to move on, because someone else over here might be just ready to receive what you're saying.

Does that make sense?

And so everybody in Asia Minor, after two years, had heard the word.

It took 27 months of preaching, but everybody in that whole area and I heard it.

Why is that important?

Because in the end time judgment, every man, woman and child is going to stand before God.

And great, we call it the great white throne judgment, the end of everything.

All everything is said and done.

Churches come and been raptured.

The devil is the devil is the devil.

The devil is dealt with.

Any Christ is dealt with.

False prophets dealt with all.

At the end there's going to be a one big final judgment.

People are going to come up and one thing that God cannot stand is for someone to come up and say I never heard, nobody ever told me, no one ever gave me the good news.

I had no opportunity to accept it.

God, our father, has a better plan than that.

He will not allow one person to come up before him on that dreaded day.

We'll be there.

We'll be there watching it all go, go down, and there's not going to be one person that can say that.

Because why?

Because we're going to obey God and make sure that Everybody's been told.

Not everybody accepts it, but everybody gets a chance to hear it.

They only get a chance to hear it once.

That means we've got to keep moving.

That means we've got to keep sensitive to the Holy Spirit.

We can't afford to get all wrapped up and have a Solish kind of involvement with a whole bunch of group of people that are just continually rejecting.

Are you?

Are you with me now?

God told me in December of 03, when we were pouring the slabs on these buildings, that there was a dearth of the word.

Dirt means famine, shortage, and I knew God had spoken to me, but I didn't understand his statement.

I said I don't understand how there can be a dirt.

I know you're saying that.

Please help me to understand.

There's more churches than ever before and I realize that some are dead.

I know some of them are not really preaching the word, but there's a lot of pretty church.

We're not the only ones.

How can there really?

How can there be a dirt?

A Famine?

That's a extreme word.

How can there be a dirt of the word?

He said your children don't know what you know.

He wasn't talking about my seed, he wasn't talking about my kids, but he was talking about the next generation.

See, the next generations have been brainwashed in school.

They and if they've gone to college, they've really been brainwashed.

It's very did.

We have kids come out of our youth program and we have an excellent youth program.

We teach them the word, we let the Holy Ghost move, they are exposed.

They are taught For as long as we have them, from grade 6 through 12, that's, that's six years, and if they're faithful to come, they're going to get a whole lot of what they need to be successful.

Many of them aren't.

Many of them leave and it goes away.

I'm ashamed to say it, but I'm not responsible.

I would be responsible if I wasn't doing that.

See, when God spoke that word to me, I redoubled our efforts and I said look, our children church is going to preach the word.

Our youth program is going to get.

We're not going to have a bunch of programs.

We're not going to have a bunch of we're going to have pizza, but we're gonna have to word.

We're not gonna have six flags over Jesus prayer, but we're gonna have the word and we're gonna have the spirit.

Because I don't want to be there when God says you didn't do your job.

I Are you with me now, but I'll tell you one thing we found you.

You were hungry, you were thirsty.

Thank God, we didn't stay with the ones that were, that were arguing with us.

We've had more than a few, as you can imagine.

Sometimes people get offended when you tell them they have to change.

Why don't you change?

No, I'm gonna.

I already did my change and that's why I'm here now.

I'm still changing.

But I mean, you know we need that, we need to grow, are you man?

We need to grow up and I'm telling you, eventually, everyone in Houston, everyone in Texas, everyone in America is gonna hear the word, even Even overseas.

I've preached, I've been honored to be able to preach all over the world.

I preached in Canada, for goodness sake, that's not exactly the Bible built, no, but Scotia, man, it was so cold there anyway.

Philippines, india, france Gay party and it was very gay, all right.

So Eventually everyone's gonna hear why.

Because the Word of God will grow and mightily prevail.

I don't have to go do everything.

I mean the word does the work, all right.

So that's the first thing.

Word of God prevails over doubters and debaters of this world.

Number two it prevails over demons and disease.

Notice what happened, paul.

I mean, paul was so busy preaching he couldn't go everywhere and lay his hands on everybody, so they just took.

They just took articles of clothing and laid it on sick People, and the sick people were healed.

We have little pieces of cloth out.

Sometimes the people aren't here.

They say, pastor, would you wear this piece of cloth?

I'll stick it in my, I'll stick it in the oh.

So I'll preach with a little handkerchief in my pocket.

The end of the service I'll give it to.

I can't tell you how many healings and and and people got free of demonic Affliction's, you know, fear and all kinds of things, and so, anyway, this is called special miracles and and so when it, when they were laid on on sick people, it says that sickness is departed.

Isn't that an interesting word.

Like it's an entity, like it's a person that diseases departed from them and evil spirits left them, went away from them.

Praise God, praise God, I mean you know this.

Where and why did why did that happen?

Because God was confirming his word With signs and wonders and miracles.

It was because he was preaching the word.

And what word was he preaching?

Well, in Romans, chapter 10, paul said I'm preaching the word of faith.

Romans 10 · chapter mention

Just what I'm preaching?

I'm preaching the word of faith.

What do you mean?

The word of faith?

The word of faith, is it just simply that if you will Speak with your mouth and believe in your heart, you can have what you believe in your heart and speak with your mouth?

That's what Jesus said.

Mark 11, 23.

That's how we're all gotten saved.

You believe in your heart that Jesus Christ is, is the son of God.

He died for your sins and confessed with your mouth that he's your Lord.

You shall be saved.

That's what it says.

Romans 10, 9 and 10.

We're saved by the word of faith.

But we believe the word of faith in every area of life, in health, safety.

See, the only safety is in the gospel.

Believing the gospel Are you with me now?

So God always confirms his word.

I'm telling you, we've had our.

We've had many, many miracles.

But if we're gonna wait around and only get excited when the miracles show up, let's get excited about the prevailing word.

That's what really works.

I Said that's what really works, not that the other doesn't, but you have to wait a while sometimes.

And then the third one is found in verse.

Verse verses 13 and 17 the word of God prevails over religion and Religious thinking, or we could say, religious tradition.

Think about the world that Jesus came into.

He came into the sense very similar world you had.

You had all the Gentiles that worshiped.

And Jesus was not sent to the Gentiles.

He was sent to who?

The lost sheep of the house of Israel.

Well, what about the lost sheep of the house of Israel?

Why were they lost?

They had a covenant with God.

That's right.

But he said in Mark, chapter 713, that the traditions of men render the word of God to none effect.

So the word, that they had, the most Mosaic law and all of the washings and all of the sacrifices and animal sacrifices and all of that that they had Were of none effect.

Why?

Because of their traditions.

They added men's traditions to the word of God, and so that's the world that Jesus came into and they rejected him.

So here comes Some time later.

Here comes Paul.

He's got the similar situation.

You still got the same Jews that rejected Christ.

You've got the same Gentiles that are worshiping sticks and stones and Practicing the occult.

It's the same world, it's the same darkness that they're coming to.

Only now, you know, the word of God prevails over that situation.

You know, the world then was jealous of Paul's miracles.

So those little sons of Sceva, you know they're headed there, the head of the high Muckity mother.

There they're the sons of the high Muckity muck.

He's the ruler.

He's the ruler there locally.

I mean, he's like the Pope, he's like the Bishop, you know of the whole, he's the cardinal.

You know he's the.

He's the guy that, he's the man and His boys, they think they're the men boy.

We can.

We can cast out devils by Paul.

We want to cast out the devils by the Jesus that Paul preaches.

They didn't have a personal relationship with Jesus.

They didn't bow there and they're needed Jesus.

They didn't even believe in Jesus.

They're just gonna use the magic word.

They saw it as a magic word.

They're gonna do what the church was doing Medical science.

See, that's why you hear all this stuff about science.

Well, we're you're a science denier, you're a climate change denier.

That's right.

That's exactly right.

Was I was listen, I was educated in the scientific method.

It has its.

It has its its values and everything.

But listen, that doesn't make man God.

God.

A science does not make science isn't God.

Man isn't God.

Man is not at the top of the heap.

God is the Creator.

God made everything.

He is the top one.

Are you with me now?

And so they went out trying to duplicate the miracles.

Oh yeah, and see, that's what's going on right now.

They're getting up there telling you all these things.

People are running around with masks, running around with all this stuff, and I don't criticize them.

I think they do it, and there's a lot of Christians that are doing it.

I see preachers with masks on.

I don't understand what gospel are you preaching?

I want to bring you back to what the word said and if you need a mask, wear it.

But if you, if you get into the word, this word of God will prevail, mildling, you'll begin to realize you've got a healing covenant with God.

God can make you safer than a mask.

In fact, my scientific side says that a virus is so tiny, it's smaller than bacteria, so I can't understand how a piece of cloth can stop a virus from getting into you or getting out of you.

If you've got one, it might impede it a little bit, it might stop it a little bit.

I felt sorry for a guy who was on the news the other night.

He was a veteran.

We honor this Memorial Day, we're honoring our war dead, but we also remember our veterans.

And he was a veteran and he had, you know, a walker.

He couldn't walk very well, he was big and fell like and had a beard and everything and somebody turned him down.

They wouldn't let him come and buy groceries in this particular store in his neighborhood, unless he wore a mask.

He said I can't wear a mask.

I have COPD and where I wear a mask I gasp for breath, my oxygen levels fall.

I've worn a mask.

One time I had an old pink pocket square.

I pulled it out of my drawer.

I don't ever wear it anymore.

It's a weird color.

So I tied it around my face like a gangster, tied a knot in the back and I went and had my blood draw.

I had to have a blood draw in order to have an appointment with my doctor, and so I had to have a blood draw.

They wouldn't take my blood.

I had to go through a whole thing to even get to the where they'd taken the blood.

I had to have a mask.

But it anyway.

I kind of sympathize with him because when I was, when I had that around my face, it reminded me of when I was in ICU two years ago, when I couldn't breathe.

I mean, I just I had a hard time breathing and I could not sleep.

I didn't sleep at all in ICU for 12 days.

I never really fell asleep.

I was so miserable.

My body was all out of whack.

All I had on, all I had, was the word of God.

Oh God, you've not given me the spirit of fear, but power and love and a sound mind.

I don't have many thousand times.

I just say that one night I was so miserable I just couldn't even hardly function.

I was.

I couldn't breathe.

I was so tired.

I was so right.

I don't know if anybody's ever been in that position, but I was.

I was ragged at and I've got the word.

I know the word.

I knew God was with me, but they had pumped me full of drugs and so I was seeing all these spiders and I was seeing all these these creatures crawling across the wall and I knew they weren't real.

I knew it was a hallucination, I knew all that.

I wasn't afraid of that, but it was just distracting.

It was movement all night long.

At two o'clock in the morning I call my family, y'all get up here.

And they had to come out.

And that was a night.

It snowed and they had to get out in dangerous, you know weather and everything came up the hospital.

I said, just put your hands on me and just there they're anointing and they're, they're love, just it gave me comfort for 20 or 30 minutes till I could let them go back home and where it gets to give me a little.

I know y'all are looking at me funny.

I've been through a few things and I just know that I don't want to ever go back through there that situation Again.

I graduated from that, from that deal right there.

I'm going to do whatever I can never to let that come upon me again.

Amen and so.

But when I wrapped that thing around my my face and went in there and was waiting in the waiting room, that's the feeling I started getting.

I had that restriction of my breathing and it reminded me, it started, that started.

I started having flashbacks of that and of course, I took authority over any fear.

I mean, I knew I couldn't suffocate, but you see, just the feeling of it, and my heart went out to that veteran and he was just embarrassed and he was hurt and he was angry that they had enforced this rule on him that didn't fit.

See, it's one size fits all.

That's when you know it's the devil.

That's when you know it's not science.

This is not science, this is baloney, and we need to stand up against it.

The word of God prevails and I tell you, it just doesn't prevail, it mightily prevails, it grows, the word of God.

I don't care how the many naysayers are, I, we're okay, you're naysayer, okay.

We're moving over here to the people that have a willing heart.

We're going to preach them.

You've already heard it You've rejected finding.

We're going to move over here and talk to them.

Let you talk to yourself.

Amen, oh, the word works.

And so what happened was that when, when those boys got beat up by that demonized man, I mean he whipped up on them, bad, sent them, it said, naked and bleeding, I mean, god, that's, that's kind of a defeat, I mean that's.

I mean they wish they hadn't tangled with one man and seven guys, seven young men, you know.

And so that went across Asia Minor and the failure, the utter failure of religion resulted in the fear of the Lord and the name of Jesus was magnified and deep repentance, so much that people brought all of their, their occult and they burned it all and said we're through with this, we found the true God, we found Jesus, we found the right one.

Hallelujah to God.

See, we're, we're taking this stand and people are noticing, and the others, a little dividing line.

Don't be excited about the dividing line.

Some of them are in your family.

I understand that.

I totally get it.

I totally get it.

I'm not saying you divorce your family, but I am saying don't be intimidated by your family.

I mean, the best argument is just to live in health, just live in health, praise God, and so they had a book burning 50,000 pieces of silver.

I tell you, I just I can see the day when all this whole city and state and country is going to be lit up with the fires of revival.

Part of that fire is the fire of the Holy Ghost, but a lot of it is a fire of repentance, the fire of people burning up all of what they used to practice when they found the truth.

Praise God, come on, lift your hands and receive the power of the prevailing word Hallelujah.

Come on, let's praise him right now.

Oh hallelujah.