The Power Of Corporate Faith

I want to get into the word with you tonight.

If you got your Bibles out there while you're watching, why don't you lift them up and wave them around, make Jesus glad and the devil mad?

Let's say this together Say Heavenly Father, I'm so glad to be able to watch the Word of God come forth, and I am teachable.

I'm hungry for the word, the spirit-inspired word.

What's coming forth tonight is just for me.

I receive it not from someone else, but I receive it for myself and I'll put it to work.

That means I won't just be a hearer of it, but I will be a doer as well.

In Jesus' name, amen.

All right, I got a couple of verses Hebrews 11.

Very familiar scripture.

I don't know how many times I've preached out of these verses, but a bunch Hebrews 11.

And also, while you're turning, you can find 2 Thessalonians, chapter 1.

2 Thessalonians 1 · chapter mention

Hebrews 11, 1,.

Now, faith is a substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

For.

By it, that is, by faith, the elders obtained a good report.

Through faith, we understand that the worlds were framed by the Word of God, so the things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.

And then, 2 Thessalonians 1,.

Paul is writing to the church, and at Thessalonica it says, verse 3, we are bound to thank God always for you, brethren, as it is me, because that your faith groweth exceedingly.

And Agape, the word charity, is there in the King James, the poor translation.

It really is the Greek word Agape, which is God kind of love, the God kind of love of every one of you all toward each other.

A bound it.

And so tonight I wanted to speak to you on this subject the power of corporate faith.

The power of corporate faith.

You know we've been teaching a lot on faith lately.

We had faith diagnostics and different ways that defrost your faith, and you know the Bible illustrates that there's individual faith and also there's corporate faith, and so usually we teach on, you know, individual faith.

I mean you can't have strong corporate faith if the people that are the members of that group have weak individual faith.

You know you've got to have.

They both correspond with one another In the gospels that we pointed out during our healing Wednesdays in the month of February that 12 out of the 19 healing healings that are mentioned in the gospels mention faith.

So faith must be pretty important and we know that Jesus measured faith in individuals.

You know, he said to Peter oh ye of little faith.

And he said the Kenanite woman oh woman, how great is thy faith?

And he said I have found no great.

I have not found so great a faith no, not in Israel, talking about the centurion's faith.

So if Jesus measured the faith and if the faith of the Thessalonians, he said, had grown exceedingly, then it can be measured.

And so Thessalonians, romans, ephesians I mean they all talk of corporate faith, in other words, glorious way church.

Jesus is looking for our corporate faith at this time, right now, even though we're not gathered in one room, we're scattered, as it were, across a region and maybe even across the country.

And yet God is looking at glorious way, church, and he's looking for faith in the corporate sense, in the group sense, and he's expecting our faith to be strong.

He's expecting us to possess our individual as well as our corporate inheritances.

Kind of reminds me of that word that we had way back in September.

It seemed like a long time ago, september, the 29th of 2019.

That greatest year yet, word that we came forth on a Wednesday night, just like tonight, and God just suddenly came and came upon me and I delivered that word and it was almost like I stood outside and watched myself give it and I was in wonder and awe.

I've given a few words in my time and I don't think I'd ever given one like that.

It was unique in all my years of ministry and I knew it was very important and I knew, without anybody saying, that we were gonna be facing a lot of resistance, and God is the only one that knew this resistance was coming Boy.

This is, in time, kind of resistance.

This is kind of the kind of resistance that is written about in Matthew 24 and the kind that's written about in the book of Revelation and we're talking about the Antichrist.

Spirit is rising up and his wrath is great because he knows his time is short.

And so, if you'll remember, god said you've got individual inheritances and you've got a corporate inheritance.

God has got some things for us together as a church, that he wants us to occupy.

And if we're gonna possess our inheritance, remember what we had learned you have to possess by dispossessing.

And so what have we got right now?

Well, we have Satanic squatters, you know, illegal attacks made on us, on our finances, on our potential freedoms to move about, to even have church together.

This is an attack.

It's illegal and I'll be honest with you.

I think a lot of these stay at home orders are illegal too.

I don't think that they're legal.

I don't think they think they're based on really on any kind of good science.

We can talk about that later.

We've got plenty of time to talk about that and hold those people accountable for their decisions.

But we need to remember who we serve.

We don't serve government, we don't serve the county judge.

We serve Jesus.

We serve the king of kings and the Lord of lords, and he's expecting us and he gave us a word.

He said in a way, he said go, pass over to the other side.

And yeah, we hit a storm.

We had a pretty big storm.

In fact it's one of the biggest storms maybe this country has ever faced.

I don't think the virus is that biggest storm.

I think the economic difficulty that it gave us is bigger.

That virus, I mean, when you look at the numbers, it's just not that bad, even nationally, even if you add in the worst places, you add it all together.

We've seen worse.

Let's keep things in perspective and let's not make mountains out of mole hills.

It's just all roads to the globe.

So, anyway, that night I looked back on that word and we saw.

You know, he said say not, how shall it be?

You just don't know what I'm facing.

You know, I believe the Holy Spirit could hear what we were gonna be saying right now, during this time.

You just don't know what I'm facing.

I mean, I know some of us have been furloughed, some of us have been laid off, some of us have been told to go to work at home and we I had our hours cut and our wages cut on top of that.

And you know, one of our members, his boss, said you know, you're approaching an age and you know, and by May we're gonna have to lay you off.

You've hit that age, you're gonna have to.

We're gonna have to lay you off then.

And he happens to be in a kind of an important industry that needs him and his experience and they were gonna lay him off anyway.

So he told me we prayed and I just started.

You know, he didn't know I did this, but I started to be duking the devil and making plans to boycott the company he works for.

Well, they changed their mind Next time.

He went back to work, the boss came and apologized and said oh no, you're gonna be here till your ex-age, so surely by then Jesus will have come.

But anyway, I mean they changed on a dime.

Listen, I'm telling you right now, let's not get carried away with what we're seeing in front of us.

We have a word from God.

We have an individual word and we have a corporate word.

We have a corporate word.

And so he said don't say how shall it be?

Oh, you just don't know my situation.

He said yeah, I know what you're going through and I'm saying, in the face of everything you're facing don't listen to the naysayers, don't listen to people that say differently, just listen to my sermon, that have spoken my word to you this night.

So if you have to go back and listen to that word, if I were you, I'd be looking at that word every day and doing warfare with it.

And then another part of that word was and I said you know, promotion is not the proper word for what I'm seeing.

I'm seeing people going up multiple levels and we've already had several testimonies to that effect people that right here, at Glorious Way, that got promoted up multiple levels all at one time.

And somebody said oh, I don't know how that's gonna be.

Yeah, I know how it's gonna be.

It's gonna be.

It's gonna be through faith in God's holy word and holding on to what he said.

You know, god really told us ahead of time.

He saw what was coming and he prepared us.

He prepared us and he said in that word, he said, don't say how shall it be.

He just rejoicing, be glad and know that God has spoken Hallelujah.

Except no other report, except the one that you've heard and received, everybody say I accept no other report, I accept no depression, I accept no decrease.

The Lord is my shepherd.

I shall not go down, I shall not obey, I shall not be made low and just encourage yourself with God's Word, because we're all in this together.

We do have a corporate inheritance.

You know.

We've been saying this out of the office and on live stream.

Now is our time to shine.

Now is our time.

See, we've been awakened to the last days.

We've been awakened to this time that we're living in.

It didn't sneak up on us.

We've been watching this for years.

We've been praying against this spirit of antichrist, we've been rebuking and reproving and showing the works of the enemy, and now is the time for us to rise up and shine.

You know our corporate faith has gotten us where we are right now.

I'm coming to you from a building that is 50,000 square feet in size on 9.2 acres, and we are debt free.

We have no mortgage, and that was because of our corporate inheritance.

That was because of our corporate faith.

Corporate faith did that, and corporate faith has got so much more that God wants to accomplish through us than what we've accomplished so far.

Amen, amen.

So tonight I know I sound like a broken record.

I'm sure Brother Hagin was told that too.

I mean, some people thought the only sermon he could preach was Mark 11, 23.

But when you've got a mandate from God God tells you to go teach my people faith you do what he says to do and I feel a responsibility to keep you strengthened in this time.

It's a little vulnerable for us not to be together in one place.

The thing I think about sometimes is that you're all on YouTube.

You're viewing me on different websites Facebook, youtube but when you get online, I think about the dangers that lurk online and I think about the 25 years that we have been Glorious Way Church and online didn't matter too much the early years, but starting about 15 years ago it started to become something that we had to contend with, and especially about 10 years ago, and I've had people lead the church over what they've been deceived over on online ministries.

Please be careful.

Be careful what you watch.

Be careful who you listen to.

I'm your pastor.

I'm anointed to feed you the Word.

Don't get lost listening to other voices at this time.

It's poisonous, that's all I can say.

It's poisonous out there, so don't ingest any poison.

You know, I grew up in South Texas and one thing they did to kill coyotes is that they learned that they could put poison in the middle of raw meat.

If you put poison out, the coyote is too smart.

They're not going to eat poison.

But if you take fresh slaughtered meat bloody if possible and you put a knife little pocket in there and you stuff cyanide or some other poison up into it, they will get so ravenous that they'll start eating it and they'll be poisoned before they know it.

How many ranchers sometimes have to protect their livestock?

So that's the way the devil operates he puts a little bit of poison in a little bit of truth and what you wind up with is deceived.

I don't know why I got off on that.

But I guess because I'm pastor and I watch over you and I'm jealous and zealous over you to keep you in the truth, to keep you in the truth.

So tonight I just wanted to give you five faith reminders.

These are things that I think most of us know, but these are things that we need to consider tonight and keep them in our spirit.

Faith reminders everybody say faith reminders.

I can't hear you say it, but I believe in your repeating it.

Be faith reminders, all right.

The first one is found in Hebrews 11, 1-3-3.

If you can see it, you don't need faith for it.

Or putting it another way, faith works on the unseen.

Faith always works on the unseen.

You might not be able to see your blessing right now.

You may be have gotten some of this bad news.

You may be have gotten bad news health wise, or bad news financial wise.

I mean, I know a lot of our folks have stock portfolios that are weighed down from where they were just a month ago.

It's amazing how things can happen in a month Listen, things can change back the other way just to suddenly don't be looking at that.

Faith works on the unseen.

Faith works on what you can't see.

Number two faith begins where the will of God is known Romans 10, 17.

Faith cometh by hearing, hearing by the Word of God.

The Word of God is God's Word is God's will.

We have a Word from God, that Word that we've received back there on Rosh Hashanah.

That is God's will for our lives, that we possess our inheritance.

God wants us to possess that inheritance.

He wants us to take that Word and do battle with it.

Number three Jesus said that the God kind of faith has what it says.

The God kind of faith has what it says.

You can have what you say.

Are you talking about the name it and claim it and all of that?

You know, people have these little shortcut things that they call Word of Faith.

But Jesus had what he said, and so did Abraham, and so did the Bible figures.

I mean, they got a hold of the God kind of faith.

And God, you know, you just say it.

Let's declare this is what James was talking about.

Let's declare that we're blessed.

In the middle of everything that looks to the contrary, this is just temporary.

The Word of God is eternal.

The Word of God lasts forever.

It never changes and we can rely on what God said.

God is the one that said it and we can believe it.

The fourth thing is Romans 4.17,.

Faith calls the things that be not as though they were.

So you know it doesn't look like you're blessed right now.

Well, call yourself blessed, because the Bible says you're blessed.

You know, one of the things that we have to do is agree with God.

When you call the things that be not as though they were, what are you doing?

Well, you're agreeing with God.

You're basically saying, you know, to confess means to say the same thing as.

So, when you agree with God by calling a thing that be not as though it was, that's exactly what God did when he created the universe.

He didn't come down and say, wow, it sure is dark down there.

No, he said light be.

And he brought forth.

The Bible says he brought forth things that were not evident.

Well, they were in the mind of God.

See, whatever's in the mind of God can be brought forth.

How can it be brought forth?

It's brought forth by words that are hovered over by the Spirit.

When you agree with God's Word that he brought back on September, the 2019, I'm telling you you believe it in your heart and you speak it with your mouth and you agree with that Word, instead of what your circumstances are.

Oh, that means it's coming forth.

It's going to come forth just like the creation.

You can create a new circumstance for yourself right in the midst of all of this chaos out there.

The same goes for your health.

You can create health.

In fact, when we were preaching on Healing Wednesdays, that was born out of the thought that all these red envelopes that are behind me I knew that on those red envelopes many of you had put, I asked you to put down what is the greatest year going to look like?

What would it look like for the year to be the greatest year of your life?

What would it look like?

And I knew on those letters that you had health issues on there, things that you were believing for, things that you hadn't been able to get victory over in a long, long time.

You were going to get victory over this year, and so I thought you know people need the Word on Healing, but I need time to preach that ever more often, and so that's how that was born in February.

That's what we did.

So, really, february Wednesday nights and Sunday mornings, I preached on Ely.

I tell you we were totally prepared for that virus, but it hit.

It couldn't touch anybody.

It can't touch us, and neither can this economic difficulty.

It can't touch you if you'll just hang on to what God said.

And so, lastly, the fifth one is we walk by faith, not by sight.

Second Corinthians five seven we walk by faith, not by sight.

Or we walk by faith not what it looks like or not by what it seems like.

See, I'm telling you right now we are able to walk by faith, faith in what God said alone.

This is what the corporate faith that we see in the Bible.

You know, god talked about the corporate faith of Israel and how that he was not pleased with them because they doubted they could not enter into their inheritance because of unbelief or because of zero faith.

God looked at their faith and measured it, and measured zero.

And the Bible said he was angry with them.

He was angry, so, as a group of people, israel had no faith.

Well, what about Gloria Swacher?

I'll tell you another group of people that God looked at.

He looked at the group in Phaetar, in Revelation 219.

And he said I know your works.

And he said I know your faith and all of that.

And so he found them wanting.

He said I have a few things against you.

Listen, I tell you, is God looking at our faith?

Yes, he's looking at it.

He's expecting faith.

He's not expecting a bunch of wine and he's not expecting a bunch of poor me's.

He's expecting us to walk by faith and not by sight, and we are gonna possess our inheritance.

Oh, thank God for the God kind of faith.

You know it's been 14 years ago, next week, actually the 6th of April 2006.

I keep notes and I was in Galveston and God began to give me some words and but anyway, I was on the seawall looking out at the Gulf.

It was a rough day.

The wind was blowing you know how windy March and April are in this part of Texas and the wind was blowing out of the south and that surf was really rough, white and muddy and it was tough to be.

And I had never seen anybody in a kayak on the surf before, right there at seawall.

But this guy was in a kayak and he launched that kayak into those big waves and they were breaking over the bow of his kayak and hitting him right in the face and he didn't have any goggles on.

I felt sorry for him because I know what salt water's like when it hits you in the face.

And finally, you know, your eyes turn red and they start stinging.

And he had these little paddle, you know, and he was sitting in his kayak and he was just getting beat up and I started to chuckle a little bit.

You know, I couldn't help it.

I should have felt sorry for him, but I was chuckling.

He did it to himself, anyway.

So he's chugging along and he's going out there and he's getting hit, and he's getting hit and finally, finally, he gets past the surf and he gets out in a little deeper water where the water's not breaking.

He's just in the waves, and the waves are pretty, pretty tall, to the point where he would disappear.

He would go down in the trough and see, I'm above the sea level, I'm up on the seawall, which is what?

15 foot above sea level.

So I'm looking a little bit down on him at an angle, and yet I couldn't see him at times.

He would go down below the tops of the waves and then pop up, and he's still going.

As far as I could see, he kept going.

Finally, the Holy Spirit spoke to me and he said that's your faith.

He said that's your faith.

He said it works 24, seven, no matter what the wind is, the waves, the circumstances, whether it's turbid or clear.

He said keep on paddle and keep your faith working by your believing and speaking.

So we're gonna keep on working our faith.

We're gonna keep on looking and walking by faith.

We're gonna keep on letting our faith be measured as acceptable and good.

God is pleased with the faith that we're walking in.

And so you be encouraged tonight, no matter what your circumstances are, come on, lift your hands and receive the word of God tonight.

Be blessed.