Waiting With Expectancy

You're listening to the Cross Kingdom Sermon of the Week, we hope you enjoy

this message from Justin Carpenter. I just want to say that as as an

equipper, I cannot be more proud than moments like that because my job is

not to do everything. My job is to lead and feed, and it's

to equip the body for the work of the ministry. And when I see,

especially with today's culture, when I see the next generation rising up in

leading, I mean the average age of that team is probably fifteen, is

that right? Probably about fifteen years old. I know my son's fifteen.

And where's faith? Faith? Where are you up top? Faith? There's

a songwriting gift inside of you, and and you need to start paying attention

to spontaneous moments when you when you feel those songs bubbling up in your time

with the Lord like actually I see I see you in a car driving and

alone and just and just like spontaneously worshiping the Lord. And and pay attention

to those moments because there's songs that He's He's put inside of you for your

generation. Bless you. I said this first service. There there are times

in our journey where we need a b twelve shot from the Lord. Right,

So what I what those be twelve shots are is like moments like that.

You know, we can't twist God's arm to move, you can't create

programs, you can't listen you. God will never be manipulated. We may

be, we may have our master's degree in manipulating each other and manipulating things

on earth, but you cannot manipulate the Holy Spirit. And you know,

obviously Pentecost happens every year, right, it's celebrated. But God can be

found in his appointed feasts. Jesus is the fulfillment of all seven of those

feasts. But acts too was not the end. It was again and again

and again. And I just want to encourage you. You don't need strategy

from a self help book. We don't need more secular humanism dressing up with

a religious face. What we need is the spirit of God. We need

to understand that that Holy Spirit is the Father. That holy spirit is the

spirit of the of the Father. It is the spirit of Jesus. And

you can just gosh, but the god Head dwells inside of you. And

for far too long we have been living absolutely under what He's called us.

To anybody read the scriptures. Lately, Jesus says, the things I do,

you will do and greater because I returned to the Father. Have we

seen a greater, greater and quantity? Potentially? But he says, the

life I live just as I am, or just as he is, So

are we. So the reality is we need to stop comparing ourselves to each

other's levels of maturity, and we need to keep our comparison with Jesus.

So any place in our lives that is under what he's called us to stop

looking around and blaming other people for your lack of maturity. You're not victims.

There's no victims in the kingdom. You may have been victimized, but

your identity is not a victim. And if you refuse to let go of

victimhood, then you never get free. Period. God's not interested in counseling

your flesh. He crucified it. So on this note of these B twelve

shots, I don't care who you are, how long you've been walking with

the Lord. Everyone's human, even John the Baptist. He's in prison fixingm

to lose his head, and he goes, hey, will you go back

to my cousin and say is it really you is? Are you the Christ?

Are you the one that we're looking for? Now? This is the

same John the Baptist who had the Holy Spirit inside of him in his mother's

womb. How's that for your theology? In the womb, he's filled with

the Holy Spirit. When Mary shows up with Elizabeth, boom, there's a

jump, there's a recognition of spirit. And even he had doubts. Elijah

was totally convinced that he was the only prophet left. And there was I'm

the Lord, I'm the only one left. And now how they're gonna kill

me? And what's he say? He goes, get over yourself, Elijah,

I got seven thousand others that haven't kissed Bail. I want to tell

you, if we look at media and we watch the news, we're gonna

think there's not a single Christian left in the United States. From the news.

Oh don't stay the course, justin Okay. And so God knows that

there's these moments where we need fresh fire, that we need an infusion,

and I have sometimes I almost think we should at least record both teachings because

it I don't know about y'all, but I never seem to say the same

thing, and even though I got the same outline. AnyWho, the last

season of my life has been a roller coaster to some degree of breakthroughs and

thinking that I'm finally out of this wilderness period, only to find myself in

a different part of the wilderness. Anybody ever thought that, Like, Oh

Jesus, thank you, I'm out. And then Monday and you're like,

oh, crap, I didn't get out of it. That's Greek for a

crap ola. And then by next Sunday you're like, oh, Lord,

have mercy get me. I'm the only one left in Kerrville. Lord,

not that serious. Okay, I'm holding off on my dad jokes right now

like a boss. Anyway, So three days ago I had a dream and

in this dream, I'm sitting at a dining room table in somebody's house.

Lisa's with me, and his name was Hal. Hal means home leader or

leader of the home and and uh and he says, I have a check

for y'all, and he and he gives us a check for eleven thousand dollars.

And I knew in the dream that like this was this had to do

it for Mercygate and Cross Kingdom. Although we are separate, you know,

separate entities. And and then he goes, he pulls a white envelope out,

and he goes, and I have twenty thousand dollars for each of you.

And he pulls a twenty dollars bill out, gives it to Lisa,

pulls a twenty dollars bill out and gives it to me. Now, in

my head, I'm thinking that ain't twenty thousand, that's a twenty. But

bear with me. It's a dream, right, and it's metaphoric. And

then we go to the door to leave the house. We put her,

We go to put like our shoes on and leaving the dreams over. Now,

if you're like many in the American church culture, you don't necessarily have

a value for what can happen while you're sleeping. You may not have a

value for dreams and visions because maybe you were just taught false teachings that God

no longer uses dreams and visions, and so therefore you have a very hard

time recognizing his voice because he does not speak English. Anybody have figured out

God doesn't speaking? Are you with me? Okay? The disciples, Jesus

said to you, it's been given to know the mysteries of the kingdom,

but to them I speak in parables. Has anybody figured out that God still

spoke to them in metaphoric language? Anybody scratch their head and go like,

what's up with that? You said to them? It's been given to know

the mysteries, but yet you keep speaking comparables to them, And over and

over and over, Jesus would say, hey, do you understand what I

just said? And the disciples would go yes, Lord, and really they

went no, we just embarrassed because this is the forty fifth time that we

don't understand what you're saying to us. In fact, they were so good.

God multiplies bread. They get in the boat and Jesus says, beware

of the leaven of the Pharisees, and the disciples look at each other.

Peter, I didn't bring any bread, did you. No? I thought

you brought the bread. Thomas, well, I doubted we needed it.

That I've never I've never said that before. That was that was under the

anointing. That would be all right. Sorry, Lord, I can't equate

my dad jokes to that level. But and Jesus is like, listen,

jokers, I'm not talking about bread. And that's one of the hardest things

for us, because in our culture we are very literal, we are very

analytical, we are very tangible, and we have very much a Greek mindset.

If it's not logical, then we have very little value for it.

And then we step into this world, this invisible realm called the Kingdom of

Heaven, and all of a sudden, we're being told by God that we're

to walk in spirit and truth, which is in the invisible realm, and

we're wrestling with our logical minds of what does this look like to really walk

a true spiritual life. And when God speaks, it's metaphoric, and we're

like, half the time we don't even pay attention. It just goes right

by us because we have not been taught to honor every way in which He

choose to speak. It's interesting to me that out of the twenty dreams in

the Bible, Gideon goes to the enemy and that guy had a dream and

it was actually interpreted by the enemy by unbelievers, but that whole Eastern culture

knew that you could touch the unseen realm in your dreams and visions. And

he goes, hello, this is a loaf of barley bread rolling down the

hill and smashing the tent. He's like, oh, that's an easy interpretation.

This is nothing less than the arm of Gideon or the arm of Gideon.

Now, how many of y'all would have been like if you had overheard

that dream and you're like, how in the world did you get a loaf

of bread rolling down a hill hitting a tent with that interpretation? I want

to give you a key. Where was Gideon when God called him? He

was in the wine press. But what was he doing. He wasn't crushing

grapes because he hadn't conquered his fear yet. He was hiding threshing wheat,

which what makes bread. And it's very well possible. This isn't This is

just anology that he could have been a breadmaker, and they knew that,

and that's how they equated in the natural the loaf of barley to Gideon.

See when it says God's or higher than our ways, his thoughts are higher

than our thoughts, it's saying that God's logic is so much higher than our

logic, it seems illogical. Are you with me? So unless you're walking

in the spirit actually using the mind of Christ. Your natural mind cannot understand

what God is saying. So for years I was I was a heavy dreamer

since I was little. I could see in the spiritual realm since I was

a kid, and my grandparents, literally my grandmother, I would see a

demon in the room after a night terror and my grandmother would say, I

just had a vivid imagination, and I'm like, no, it's right there,

it's right there. And so this this invisible realm, in case y'all

hadn't figured it out lately, the invisible realm, the veil between the natural

and the spiritual. It seems to be thinning. In case you're wondering,

the enemy is not really hiding much these days because very few people in the

church have the hutzvah to challenge him when he shows up. That's Hebrew for

nerve, not the spirit of stupid. And so I found myself with God's

night message and I knew eleven is the number of the prophet, and it's

also the number of transition. And when you have extra zeros like that,

there's an emphasis on the meaning of the number, an emphasis on this issue

of transition, and number twenty is associated with prayer and expecting God to do

something big. It's associated with the prophetic. The sum of ten by two

tends to be a witness that God has ordered some thing and has to do

with process associated with that manifestation. Now where am I getting all this?

I'm glad you asked. You're welcome. There are twenty dreams in the Bible.

In fact, did you know a third of the Bible's dreams and visions?

And if you don't believe that God speaks that way, we might as

well throw a third of the Bible out. In Genesis twenty you see the

first dream Genesis twenty eight and thirty one Jacob Genesis thirty one, Laban he

was a stinker. He changed his Jacob's wages ten times. You know that,

and yet God prospered him through his father in law's wickedness of changing his

wages ten times. Some of y'all quit jobs right before your promotion because you

just thought it was too hard. You didn't have faith that God could promote

you in the midst of adversity. Been there. I was working for the

Rocky Mountain News during the merger between the new The Rocky Mountain News and the

Denver Post and as soon as my uncle was still there, but his friends

left. And I found out later that my boss didn't have a choice in

hiring me. You know that can kind of hurt work relations when you're told

get justin in for a urine test, you're hiring him. I found that

out much later, by the way, and so he had a grudge against

me, and I finally got tired of his stuff because I was young and

I knew more, and so I walked out during the merger in the middle

of the night, just quit. I did put my wife through a few

shenanigans early on a marriage. I had quit a couple of jobs, and

I found out that they were offering severance packages in ninety days. If I

just would have held on for ninety days, this is in two thousand and

one, I could have walked away with almost a twenty thousand dollars check.

Ooh, so much for perseverance and a hard lesson right and Genesis forty you

had the butler and the baker. Genesis forty one, Pharaoh judges the Gideon's

army God came to Solomon and said, I'll give you anything you want.

And that's when he got wisdom, and he said, because you didn't ask

for your enemy, you didn't ask for these other things, I'm gonna give

you everything, and made Solomon the richest man ever. Daniel Chapter two,

Chapter four, Daniel seven. Matthew. From the moment Mary was became pregnant

with Jesus, all the way through his early childhood, the Lord kept coming

to Joseph in dreams and night visitations, guiding him and protecting him from the

enemy. Just go look in Matthew that I bounce ahead, Yeah, Matthew

one. In Matthew Chapter two. There's even twenty visions in the Bible,

and one of the I want to encourage y'all on something. If you don't

write down your dreams, you're not going to remember them, because dreams are

written with disappearing ink. Now, if it's a vision, it's like we're

Santana. Santana's a tattoo artist up top there. Anytime I see somebody with

ink, I'm like, do you know Santana? And a lot of times

they do, and I'll find out how he ministered to them or prophesied over

them, and you know, prophetic art. Where I was going help me

Lord anyways, disappearing ink. But night visions are like spiritual tattoos. They

don't leave you. And and night visions or open visions are so real sometimes

you can't tell the difference between the natural and the spiritual. And that's exactly

what happened to Peter. Peter gets busted out of jail and acts the angel

walks with him. It even says the gate. I love this part.

The gate opened up on its own. The angel didn't open the gate,

it said, the gate opened up on its own? Well, who opened

the gate? And it wasn't until the angel left him that he realized it

was not a vision. So what does that tell you? It tells you

right now, us encountering each other when you have an open vision, it

literally, is this real? Twenty visions, and there's twenty examples of relating

of people relating to waiting for God to speak. Y'all, it doesn't matter

where you're at in your walk with the Lord. Right now, every one

of us has these moments of doubt. Every one of us is like,

am I really doing what I'm called to do? And especially in moments of

adversity, when things get really hard, we want to know that the path

we're on is worth the pain? Are you with me? Like I always

told the Lord, I'm like, Lord, i'd like to say, I

don't care how hard it gets, but I'm being real. I don't want

it to get like really really really hard. But I'm like, I just

want the fruit to match, Like if I'm going to go through hell,

I want crazy fruit from heaven. Right, And somebody said no, Oh,

I thought you were like, no, Like, who speak that?

And so I know I'm kind of bouncing back in this world of dreams.

But as I went back to that dream, and I realized the Lord was

encouraging me because something big is about to happen, and he knew that I

was losing the fire of expectation or expectancy. In the midst of the battle,

listen, times can get so hard. An entire army is literally flailing

in fear until a young shepherd boy shows up and says, I've killed a

lion, I killed a bear and who are you? You? Uncircumcised philistine

David shows up, one out of the whole army, even his own brothers.

What do you do? And here we know the pride in your heart.

Go back and take care of those sheep. No, it takes one,

and we're stepping into a season of this nation where it's gonna take the

body of Christ to literally rise up and have the hutztha, the nerve,

the backbone to say not on my watch and not worry about the consequences,

because the enemy is after your children and he's not hiding. When you have

drag queens reading children's books and parents bringing them to hear it, we are

in trouble. These are warning signs when we I just read in the news

two days ago that there was an elementary school that the atheists got the Christian

coal Athlete's Coalition kicked out of the elementary school. Hello, people, listen.

COVID showed where the church was. So much of the church folded like

a deck of cards and shut the doors out of fear and a false interpretation

of Romans thirteen. I'm getting fiery this morning. But if we don't have

those private moments, the private victories, when no one's around and no one

can say, oh, it's so, you're amazing and it's done because of

the motive of Jesus and you don't care if anybody sees. That is the

history that builds a giant, a giant of the faith, when we're constantly

seeking after him when nobody's around, and it doesn't matter if it's seen.

What matters as you're with your king. We've got to get back to where

we raise up a generation of worshippers and leaders that care more about the secret

place than the public place, where they're ministering from intimacy and overflow versus a

gift, because a gift doesn't break anything, only the anointing does. Twenty

years Israel waited for deliverance through Samson Judges fifteen twenty and Judges sixteen twenty years.

The Ark of the Covenant waited and carry off German for Samuel seven to

two twenty years. Solomon was waiting for the completion of the temple in his

house. Feels like we're waiting twenty years to break for cross kingdom sometimes,

but we did just get back the four plans and the elevations on both buildings

for some tweaking, and they are the firm is rocking and rolling. So

I can't wait to show that. I was telling the poor folks in the

Nosebleed. They were looking between the fence trying to see the TVs. I

said, don't worry. The next building's all one story. There's no railing.

I was like, this was a bar, So you know now we're

serving different wine. Twenty years. Jerusalem waited between its capture and its destruction

Jeremiah fifty two, four to thirteen and Second Chronicles thirty six twenty years.

Jeremiah prophesied concerning the destruction of Jerusalem Jeremiah fifty two. So twenty seems to

have to do with a person of God having the side scoop and waiting for

it. He Bakic says, though it tarries wait for it, but he

said, write it down so you can run. Listen. If there is

no vision, people cast off restraint. Nothing of the kingdom is ever started

by happenstance. Nothing of eternal significance happens simply because of a soulish desire in

somebody's heart. It happens because there is an apostolic assignment given to an individual.

Period and guess what, before we think too highly of ourselves. Anytime

you're called to do something more than like, it wasn't because you were the

greatest and the best. So it seems to be related to personal revelation and

waiting or serve God until it's fulfillment. Y'all, there are moments where we

need these B twelve shots, where it's it's like a frog in hot water,

where we're plowing, we're plowing, we're serving, we're pouring out,

and all of a sudden it sneaks up on you and you recognize somewhere you

crossed a line where you started pouring out more than what you were taking in.

And it's really easy to do, and all of a sudden then you're

like, Lord, did you really call me to this? Lord? Is

this really gonna happen? I've jokingly said a few times now when I ask

the Lord some years back, are we really gonna Are we really gonna build?

This? Was when I thought we'd just build a little fifteen thousand square

foot building and be done. Part of me. He had other plans,

obviously, And I'm like, is this really going to happen? Lord?

And he said yes, but it's going to be hard. I went,

Lord, can I ask you again? But why would we think anything of

eternal significance would be easy? I came out of a background a denomination that

basically taught you if you were experiencing a high level of resistance towards something that

you probably weren't called to do it because it wasn't easy. Well, I

don't know where that theology came from, but that stinks. I have actually

found that if there isn't warfare attached to what you're stepping into, it's not

worth doing. And if you don't like it, join the rest of us.

So on this day of Pentecost, hopefully a lot of you listen.

It never ceases to amaze me how over the years we've had leader after leader

after leader, like top leaders in the charismatic movement, you know, spirit

filled arena, say what God's doing here in Kurvi is not the norm.

They go all over the world and it's not something they say to puff somebody

up. And I'm afraid at times that familiarity can blind us. I think

what God's doing among us is extremely special, and I think that it can

be lost way easier than you think. And we have a responsibility as the

body of Christ to stewart what the Lord's doing. You understand that who was

it? So tell me, said, I don't know his first service,

but the look at the health of families in a community, and it will

directly correlate with the health of a church. You understand that family started with

God. He called his angels his sons. He's the one that created that

term. Right, So our creator is the one that gets to define what

family is, not us. No man gets to redefine what marriage is.

Hello, Jeremiah twenty nine to eleven, For I know the plans I have

for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil,

to give you a future and a hope. To understand. Jeremiah twenty nine

to eleven was literally written at right on the cuffs of Israel headed into Babylonian

captivity for seventy years. They're literally at the doorfront to go into captivity.

Jeremiah's prophesying, listen, if you'll surrender to your enemy, I will prosper

you, if you will plant vineyards, literally telling them to set up their

life in the enemy's camp that God would prosper them. Where all the other

knucklehead prophets were lying, telling the people what they wanted to hear, and

they were being answered according to their idols right on the cuffs. But God's

heart was like listen, I know the thoughts I have for you. This

is the same God in Ezekiel says, do I take delight in the destruction

of the wicked? No, I'd rather they repent. This is the same

God that turns around and rebukes the disciples because they want to call fire down

from heaven and smote them. And he goes, huh, huh, you

don't know what spiritual are. So the moment we allow the lawlessness of a

culture to harden our hearts to such a degree that we're praying destruction over the

people, your heart's wrong. You've lost the understanding of what God lives inside

of you. Jesus said that he came to seek and to save that which

is lost. He didn't come to destroy man's life, but to what save

it. I'm going to land the plane, yo, I'm gonna land safely

Hebrews eleven one. Now, faith is the realization of what is hoped for,

the proof of things not seen. Faith is the substance of things hoped

for, the evidence of things unseen. No matter how much revelation you carry

in your heart for what God's called you to, he is never going to

remove your need for faith. He's never going to give you so much understanding

of your destiny that you no longer need faith to get there. Period.

In fact, the clearer the word that you get from the Lord means the

harder the fulfillment, because there's going to be those moments where you need that

B twelve shot. Lord, did you really call me to do this?

Because this is painful? So I really got to put up with all these

people? This is painful? Do I have to deal with uncle Ned?

Hopefully nobody's got uncle Ned in here. That was just an example, and

you're literally fatigued from it, And all of a sudden you're stirred in your

spirit, and the Holy Spirit, who leads you and guide you into all

truth, brings you back to the remembrance of the words that were spoken over

your life. And then he says, use them to fight the good fight.

He says, use them to wage warfare, because our weapons are not

carnal Zachariah nine to twelve. Return to your stronghold, O prisoners of Hope.

Today I declare that I will restore to you double double for your trouble.

Y'all, if you're on the threshold of hell, don't stop. You

understand many times transition. It literally feels like you're going through hell. Don't

stop, keep going because if you stop in the midst of process. Guess

what, it's not like God goes, oh, okay, here you go.

No, he was in the process of removing all the garbage out of

your life that would actually keep you from being able to steward the promotion.

That Psalms one O five and the word of the Lord, What the word

of the Lord did? What to Joseph tested him? That word for testing

there means to purge. Don't think it's strange that you've walked into so many

fiery trials because you're testing of your faith, much more precious than gold and

silver. If you're being tested right now, thank God, because he is

testing you for promotion, not demotion. And as long as you don't get

a spirit as stupid in the process, you can get through it and get

promoted. And no, Christia, the spirit is stupid is not really in

the scripture. There's one really close stupor. Christie asked me in a class

long time ago, because I from time to time say the spirit is stupid.

She goes, is there really a spirit of stupid? I was like,

Oh no, that's bad discipleship. Sorry, y'all. All right,

I'm landing Proverbs thirteen twelve. Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a

desire fulfilled is a tree of life. I wait for the Lord, my

soul waits, and in his word, I hope, y'all. I had

not been logging my dreams for quite a while because it seemed like all I

was having was warfare. Dreams are no dreams at all, and I was

really getting tired of it, and so I stopped logging. And I don't

know how long this period went, but I know this. Three days ago,

when I had that dream, and I begin to weep over the interpretation

of that dream, the Lord reminded me that one of the Hebrew words that's

translated dream actually means to grow strong. Wow. So that means when God

gives you dreams, you grow strong spiritually. Who wants to grow strong spiritually?

Who takes some God dreams? And I begin to weep. And when

I got ready to log my dream on my phone and I opened my app,

I got ready to log the dream, and all of a sudden,

I stopped dead in my tracks, and I felt this My heart rise up

and go, I don't want to log my dream. And then I thought,

well, self, why don't you want to log your dream? It's

okay to talk to yourself as long as you don't answer yourself back. And

so I'm looking at this phone and I feel this resistance of wanting to log

the dream. And then all of a sudden, I start crying, and

I realized in that moment, I had stopped logging my dreams, however,

long ago, as a way to avoid pain of not seeing dreams fulfilled.

Anybody been there? And the Lord just hit me with that B twelve shot,

And it was like when I said, you were waiting for your promise,

I keep my promises. And again it was a It was just the

reminder of that invitation of dreaming with him. Y'all, there's an invitation for

us to dream with God. Make no mistake. There'll be a process of

purging, and it's gonna stink at times. How's that for deep theological word?

It's gonna stink, but the fruit will be worth the process. So

I don't know where every single person is this morning, but I can tell

you this wake up. Understand the hour we're in, Understand the prophetic timeline

that we're in, and say, God, I've count the cost and I

want to dream with you. I want something to work towards, to minister,

towards that's way bigger than me that I can't see because it's eternal,

and I can take it with me as a reward and lay it at your

feet. Servants work for wages, children work for inheritance. Let's stand,

Yeah, will you unmute the keys for me? But if it's not dead,

oh keyser on, look at that. It's a miracle. Prayer team,

if you all will come forward, look at that and only went two

minutes over. I'm so proud of myself. But you know what the Bible

says about pride. Pride's gotta go, so Father, I just think thank

you for listening. For more messages and other resources, please subscribe to this

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